


In the Shadow of Your Heart

by 94BottlesOfSnapple, pietray



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, Alternate Universe - Magic, Demon Hunter Foggy Nelson, Demon Hunter Frank Castle, Demon Matt Murdock, Gen, M/M, Season/Series 01, Sentient New York City, Temporary Character Death, nonreligious depiction of demons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-15 19:54:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 24,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18676357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/94BottlesOfSnapple/pseuds/94BottlesOfSnapple, https://archiveofourown.org/users/pietray/pseuds/pietray
Summary: The City That Never Sleeps is more than a clever moniker; New York is alive and it's full of demons. When one of them moves to destroy the City, it summons Matt Murdock to save itself and offers him any soul he chooses from within its bounds in return.There are millions of souls in New York City and they all glow differently. Matt traces his fingers across a number of them before he finds the one he truly desires.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The City summons its champion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This first chapter is for the Daredevil Bingo prompt: "Limbo"
> 
> Beta'd by [TheLadyZephyr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLadyZephyr/pseuds/TheLadyZephyr)

When Matthew Murdock dies, his hands are inches from the throat of the man who ordered his father’s murder, close enough that he can feel Roscoe Sweeney’s body heat against the pads of his fingers, pulsing like blood. They get no closer than that.

He takes a single bullet to the base of his skull, and can still feel the burn of it when he no longer has a skull to feel at all.

Matthew Murdock falls through the cracks, the way he always has. His body is destroyed beyond recognition and dumped without ceremony or care into the East River. There’s no one to miss him. No one to wonder if his soul has passed on.

It hasn’t.

The devil in him claws to the surface, clings to the City, clings to revenge, laughs at the way the City – webbed with energy and darkness and pain like a cracked windowpane – clings back. And even when the rest falls away, all the senses that remain falling silent with no input at all, there’s a piece the City in Matt and a piece of Matt in the City. A seed of each one in the other, a place where they’re the same – ravenous, protective, wounded.

And so perhaps in the end that’s the reason – the reason that, eleven years later when the City feels its first stirrings of true fear, it pulls Matthew Murdock out of the nothing, out of the void, out of the Ether. Draws him like a blade from that empty realm of demons and offers him anything he asks for.

* * *

The first thing he hears as he gasps in his first breath is screaming. Everything screaming. Himself, screaming. Every sense warring with the unprecedented, sudden onslaught of information. It’s like being blinded all over again.

… All over again.

Because he was. Blind. Before, yes. Before the aching gulf of nothing, before the Ether. Before it, he’d been… He’d been…

**Matthew** , the City seems to sing, soothing him from its barrage of sounds and smells and textures.  **Matthew Michael Murdock.**

Yes. It all comes back to him, rushing through him like blood through veins – Jack Murdock, the accident, the orphanage, Stick… The mobsters.

The gun.

One shaking hand reaches for the back of his neck, but there’s no scar beneath his sensitive fingertips. Just soft skin and the wispy, silken brush of hair. The City has made him whole again. Bright and shiny and new.

And older. He must… He must be older, he thinks to himself, because he had been only seventeen when he died and he feels sturdier, a little taller than he did then. When Matt rubs a hand across his face, shakily assessing the differences in his body, he feels the itchy rasp of stubble where before there had been nothing but smooth skin.

The clothes he’s wearing are different too, not the simple, threadbare things he’d had on – hand-me-downs from the orphanage. Instead, the fabric against his skin is soft, gentle. High in quality, fitted like a dream. A button-up shirt, a silk tie, a suit jacket and slacks. Dress shoes. There are a pair of glasses perched on his nose. He pulls them off slowly, runs the pad of his thumb along the edge of the frames. Round. Matt slips them back onto his face. He tries to imagine the picture he makes. Professional, maybe. Like the lawyer his dad always wanted him to be.

A strange, contented feeling fills him that he knows is not his own. It’s the City, taking pride in its work, telling him,  **Look what We have made of you, feel the strength We have given you** . And there is strength. A well of power so deep it almost scares him, thrumming under his skin, between muscle and bone.

The power of a demon.

Because that’s what he is now, he realizes with a shudder. A demon. One of the more-than-human creatures that stalk the streets of the City, that leave black Marks on the skin of the people living in it like dirty fingerprints.

The City has always had demons in it, and they have always had magic, but this? It’s beyond anything Matt recalls hearing about as a child or a young man. What he’s been given is fathomless. He could do anything with this power. Rip the world apart and put it back together.

But even with so much magic at his beck and call, he’s— cold. It’s like a hunger but it aches in his fingers and his heart instead of his belly. He… Needs something. Something…

The asphalt is warm under his feet, hums with life and energy, but not enough. The City can’t give Matt what he needs. What he needs…

_ That’s right _ , he thinks to himself.  _ That’s right. A soul. _ He needs a soul. But even if the City is full of souls, it doesn’t have one of its own to keep Matt warm.

What warmth it does have surrounds Matt, strokes a summer breeze against his cheek and says—  **It’s ok. Choose one. Any one you want is yours, if you do as We ask.**

And Matt is so desperately hungry for that warmth, and he loves his City – remembers, from Before, having always loved it, having learned that love from his father and from the people around him – that he says yes without any hesitation at all.

The deal is struck.

The City needs a protector, and Matt needs a soul, and then… Then the screams inside them both will stop.

* * *

Like the municipality it’s situated in, the City began on the island of Manhattan – and like that municipality, over the years, it spread out from its starting point, small tendrils into the towns that would someday become New York City’s outer boroughs. With more area and more population came more power. More magic. The City went from an impressive magical entity to a veritable behemoth.

So, it’s something of an understatement to say that the City is large – both in metaphysical scope and in physical size. Matt has nothing else to do, he could cover all of it, but… The City sends him flashes, thought-ideas of other people patrolling. Not demons, like him, not beholden to the City, but… Champions. Heroes. So Matt, though he does go pretty far afield at times, mostly sticks to what he knows – the handful of city blocks that have been carved into his heart since he was a boy. And the City doesn’t protest, just glows under Matt’s adoration and loyalty, so he thinks he must be right where he’s supposed to be. It cloaks him in tight-fitting athletic wear and a mask when he flies over the rooftops at night, and in a high-quality suit when he taps his way down its streets during the day.

Matt feels best when he sticks to his purpose, when he’s working to fulfill his deal with the City and track down whoever is trying to dismantle it, but the world has changed in the time he’s been dead, and he and the City both delight in it. New assistive technology; quality and ease and comfort.

Faster, better access to information, as well – aliens attacked while he was gone, apparently. Matt’s not sure he’d believe it if it weren’t corroborated by thousands of sources. Maybe thinking aliens are far-fetched is a little hypocritical for a literal demon, but… Well, people had actually met demons before.

But more than any of that – the information, the accommodations – Matt best loves the way that sensory information wraps around him like a cloak. It’s been eleven years since he’d last felt the wind on his face, the warmth of the sun. Eleven years since the last time he’d smelled baking bread or roses or steel. He lets himself enjoy it; basks in the world around him and the myriad of sensations it provides. The City indulges him in it, takes joy in his joy – even peppers his experiences with knowledge of its own, when it can.

The City knows everything about itself, about the people that reside in it. But it’s not human, and even its connection to Matt doesn’t always seem to allow it to communicate in a way he can understand. It’s enough to give Matt flashes of thought, of sensation, of knowledge, but when it comes to big ideas everything falls apart.

Because of that, all Matt knows about his enemy is the deep, dark well of destruction, of rage and brutality and desire, that makes him up. More than that, there’s little Matt knows even about himself – about demons at all. There are things he recalls, but not enough. And his father taught him to study, even if the rest of the world taught him to fight.

So Matt goes to the place he knows holds answers in a form he can actually read: the library.

The building isn’t empty when he enters, but he can only make out a few heartbeats besides the one near the entrance that he thinks must be an employee. Carefully, Matt makes his way to the help desk, and when he comes to a stop, running a hand over the counter, the librarian – a woman, he thinks, who smells like flowery deodorant and hairspray – asks how she can help.

“I’m looking for books about demons,” he explains and flashes a smile he knows makes people’s hearts stutter in their chests.

The librarian is no exception.

“I. I can. Ah,” she stammers. “I’m not sure how much we have in Braille but. I can… Show you?”

“That would be lovely.”

* * *

The librarian sets him up at a table with the few Braille books that meet his specifications, and a handful of audiobooks on the topic of demons. She also offers to help him search the web for more information on one of the library’s computers, but Matt waves her off as kindly as he can. He’s not comfortable with her looking over his shoulder while he researches, and he doesn’t like needing so much help.

He reads through the tables of contents and skips any sections on Marks – those are simple enough, and Matt remembers learning about them even as a child. Seeing them, even, before the loss of his sight.

Remembers the soft scrape of skin on skin as Jack Murdock sat in a hospital chair rubbing a weathered thumb over a roughened palm. Considering, Matt’s sure now – weighing the costs in his mind, imagining what a Mark would look like there. Everything had still been too much for Matt back then, so soon after the accident, but he’d always been able to anchor himself to his dad. To hear-smell-feel what Jack was doing, even if he’d been too young to understand the implications.

Matt shakes himself from the reminiscence. Though he has no way to know what his own Deal Mark looks like, he knows as a demon that he must have one – must have some smooth, clean, professional claim to leave on the skin of any human who makes a deal with him, one that will only fade at the conclusion of that deal.

And its reverse, the same design but sharp and ugly and jagged, like a tattoo with blowout – a Death Mark. The proverbial Black Spot. They’re rare, of course, not many demons have grudges deep enough to warrant one. Once, Matt had assumed this was because demons weren’t human, had never been human – that they rarely understood the feelings necessary to form a grudge in the first place.  _ Apparently not _ , he muses wryly. But regardless of their reason or rarity, Death Marks are a good indicator to other humans to stay well away unless they want to risk getting between a demon and their prey.

The books also contain a lot of philosophy about the soul, about its worth or its scientific makeup. Matt skims this as best he can, focusing on speed rather than comprehension – it interests him but it’s not vital – and there are a few times he needs to slide his fingers back across a line or two to puzzle out what he’s missed.

His focus, however, is on deals. On what it means to sell a soul, on alternate methods of payment humans have used in their deals, on summonings and intent and the common knowledge people have gathered about demons. Cautions that hiring a Hunter to get rid of your Mark means whatever you got out of the deal will vanish after the demon is killed or exorcised. So much of it is adversarial advice – human versus demon. There must be a better way, Matt thinks. He doesn’t want to control someone, to take away their autonomy. Just the thought of it makes his stomach twist with disgust. But he needs a soul, needs to cleave himself to its heat. More than that, he wants, desperately, what the City has promised him. A soul for him, his choice of the millions of them scattered throughout its borders.

Matt wishes, as he sets aside the first book, that there were texts in the library written from a demon perspective, but there aren’t. Something to tell him if it’s like this for the other demons. He’s beginning to think it isn’t, that the usual rules don’t apply to him. Not with the ocean of magic the City’s poured into him for the sake of its own protection. There’s no guide for this.

Though he spends hours at it, switching between audiobooks and Braille, the kind of information he seeks just isn’t something that’s readily available. It’s hard to believe that there has never been another demon interested in something more symbiotic than parasitic, but he supposes a story like that could easily slip through the cracks. Or be deliberately covered up by the Demon Hunters’ Council. Matt isn’t as naïve as he was at ten, or even seventeen – it’s obvious that a narrative of cooperation between humans and demons wouldn’t be lucrative for the Hunters.

Matt goes away disappointed; still, he does learn a few interesting things – a few demon tricks that might serve him well. The formation of magical constructs – magic molded into physical objects – is the most appropriate. They’ll be useful for the fight ahead. Armor, weapons, from thin air? There’s no measuring how precious those can be.

Once he’s exhausted his resources, Matt returns the materials he’s borrowed to the front desk and heads back out onto the streets.

* * *

That night, Matt puzzles over everything he’s learned, lying atop the roof of an apartment building. The people inside are all asleep, except for the couple on the third floor who are sleepily quizzing one another on statutes. Matt’s chest aches a bit with longing – he’d wanted to be a lawyer, once upon a time. It’s a dream that will never come to pass.

There’s a warm, comforting stroke of air against his face, and Matt offers a smile. It’s not what he wanted for himself, but he’s content with his existence. There’s a longing in his bones and a threat hanging in the air, but Matt’s always worked best in danger, always worked best with violence.

And with the City coaxing him, he makes his first construct. A simple set of well-balanced wooden sticks, the kind he’d been trained to fight with as a kid. They feel weighty and warm and right in his hands.


	2. Chapter 2




	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt hears a little girl crying and strikes another deal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for the Daredevil Bingo Free Space, using the prompt: "Hell to Pay"
> 
> Beta'd by [TheLadyZephyr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLadyZephyr/pseuds/TheLadyZephyr)

It’s not long into his summoning that Matt hears the girl crying. Every night, crying. Her father comes into her room at night, and terrible things happen, and she cries.

The City is used to those sobs, even if it doesn’t like them. To Matt, though, they’re grating. They fray his nerves, rub them raw. But this isn’t in his deal, this isn’t part of the plan.

Still, it… It doesn’t always take demon magic to fix the world’s problems. Matt phones in an anonymous tip. He waits, he hopes.

The crying doesn’t stop. It actually gets worse – silent and gasping and painful. Helpless rage burns in his stomach like cold fire, only enhancing the chills that shiver through his body. But there is nothing he can do, no part of this that he can wrestle under the heading of the City’s deal. And the City is used to the crying, even when it hates it. It has to live with every person in it, the girl’s father included – the City doesn’t love him, but he’s still a part of it, one flickering flame among millions. And the only ones Matt is allowed to harm are the ones the City summoned him to. There’s no cruelty to the way it ushers Matt far from the girl’s window, but it still hurts. Aches inside him like a festering wound that Matt worries will never be healed.

Until the girl does something new. Until the night that she sets a book, dank with mildew, on her bedroom floor with a heavy thump. Scribbles something into the wood of the floorboards in firm strokes of what must be, by smell and sound, chalk. Dark energy fizzles in the air that night, a summoning to be done, a deal to be made. A deal born of vengeance and terror and the desperation of a child betrayed. A deal that sings for him. And Matt is clever, and he’s powerful, and he’s the City’s favorite. The deal is his almost before he can think to ask for it.

Matt’s fighting clothes melt away, back to the suit and tie, back to the glasses. He eases open the girl’s window and breathes the warmth of her small, flickering soul.

Eva, Matt knows suddenly, like her summoning has broadcast it directly to him. Her name is Eva.

She startles, backs away from him. He knows why, of course, and doesn’t step any closer. Just stands back and waits for her to make the first move. Eventually, after several shaky inhales, she does.

“Who— who are you?”

“I’m a demon,” he explains with a loose shrug. “You called me.”

“You don’t look like a demon,” she tells him skeptically.

Matt taps the frames of his glasses with a finger.

“I wouldn’t know,” he replies. “How do you mean?”

“Demons have horns.”

Between one breath and the next, there they are. Horns. He can feel the weight of them, long and heavy and sharp as they curve away from his skull and over his head.

“Like this?” he asks Eva.

“Yes,” she says, and the swish of her long hair tells him she’s nodding firmly. “That’s much better.”

Matt can’t help but smile at her certainty, toothy and entertained. There’s still a spark in her, even after… The smile fades. Even after.

“Why is it you called for me, Miss Eva?”

He’s careful to keep his tone low and soft for her, to not let any of the menace he’s feeling escape. His anger isn’t for her and she shouldn’t have to see it. But like him, Eva seems to have gone solemn.

“Can you do  _ anything _ ?” she questions him hesitantly. “Anything I ask for?”

“Anything,” Matt replies, because it’s true and because he wants to give her that reassurance.

When Eva breaks down, it’s near-silent. The way she’s learned to cry, the way she’s been forced to learn to cry. There’s heat thrumming through Matt’s bones now, but it isn’t a soul, it’s incandescent rage.

She doesn’t even have the words to talk about what’s been done to her, but she explains it as best she can, as best as she’s able to understand it. In touches unwanted, in squirmy itchy wrong feelings under her skin, in times she’s said ‘no’ or ‘stop’ and been ignored. In worries that she’s bad for saying no, for feeling itchy-squirmy-wrong, for wanting everything to end rather than go on this way.

“I just want him to stop it,” she says with only the slightest tremor in her voice to give away her tears. “It hurts. Please can you make him stop it?”

And that? Oh, Matt can do that. A deadly smile splits his face.

“Absolutely.”

The shuddering quality to her breaths slows gradually, then stops. Eva nods, and her hair swishes, bringing a cloud of sugary-smelling children’s shampoo to Matt’s nose.

“Then, I…” Eva takes a deep breath, exhales in a way that seems to take everything out of her. “I want you to. Even… Even if you have to take away my soul, or I go to Hell, it’s ok. I don’t… I don’t care if it’s bad anymore. I don’t care.”

Matt’s deadened heart breaks in his chest at her resolve. She’s just a kid. She’s just a kid who wants to be free of her abuser. She shouldn’t have been hurt in the first place, but she’s willing to damn herself, to sacrifice anything she has to, to make sure it stops.

“I don’t take souls away from their owners, Miss Eva,” Matt tells her, quiet and earnest because a deal will never mean that, not to him. “And I don’t send little girls to Hell. But… I’d like you to make me a promise. A promise to work hard in school and do your best. Does that sound fair to you?”

“I.” She hesitates, perhaps sensing that the offer seems too good to be true, but after a steadying breath she nods. “Yes. I… I can do that.”

“Then the deal is struck, Miss Eva,” Matt tells her sweetly, holding out a hand.

Her tiny one clasps it and shakes, and warmth-life-power crackles through him as his Mark glows warm and strong against the inside of her forearm. She won’t pay the price for the City’s deal, no, but the one she’s made now will sustain Matt until he finds a soul he truly hungers for. And he can slake himself with violence in the meantime.

Eva won’t have reason to cry anymore. Matt has a lesson to teach.

* * *

The dawn is coming soon, but it’s still dark when Matt finds his prey. Eva’s father works a night shift, and his regular route home is a meandering one. He is the thing that goes bump in the night, he doesn’t worry as he walks, takes his time enjoying the night that he’s made so unsafe for his own daughter.

But that’s what Matt’s here to fix. As his unsuspecting mark wanders between two empty train cars, Matt leaps down in front of him, scattering dirt and gravel under his feet. Eva’s father stumbles backwards, there’s a brush of air as he throws his arms up in front of his face.

“What the hell?”

Which is a fitting question, because the Ether might not be Hell – it’s not anything, really, just empty and void, without even enough awareness to be a place of suffering – but Matt’s feeling as fierce and evil and burning as any kind of Hell-born monster. He’s wearing the mask the City gave him again, the fighting clothes. He could manifest a weapon but he doesn’t want to. Wants this to be pure and close and vicious.

He lands one punch, and then another. Crack. Snap. Matt catalogues the sounds idly, filters them back through hazy memories of Stick’s training to put names to them. Broken nose. Shattered rib. He remembers how much they hurt, and it’s not enough for what’s been done to Eva. His own mind distracts him then, trying to concoct something good enough, a pound of flesh that will even remotely cover the cost, and he takes a wild jab to the chin from his prey, splits his lip.

There’s no thought after that. Just ugly claws ripping through fragile human flesh. The scrape of them on bone. The screams. Loud enough that at any other time they would make Matt clutch his ears in anguish, but with fury blazing through him burning everything else to ash they sound clear and lovely, like the ringing of a bell.

Matt’s hands are wrapped with cloth but the man’s blood seeps through them. It’s hot and soothing against his skin. He wants to bathe in it, use it to drive away the chill that still haunts his bones. When Matt flashes his victim a smile, his teeth are fangs and the same huge, curving horns he proved his power to Eva with have sprouted from his skull.

“Touch your daughter again and I’ll know,” Matt breathes, dragging the limp form of Eva’s father close enough that they share the same air – and then pressing a burning hand to the man’s jaw and leaving behind his Mark; a warning, a brand, equal and opposite to the one hidden beneath his daughter’s sleeve, a jagged mirror of Matt’s Mark that flares with malevolence instead of protection. “Touch her again and you die.”

“W-who are you?” the man demands, terror laced through every agonized breath.

Demons don’t have names. Don’t remember them. They choose new ones, when they surface. And even though the City returned his name to him, Matt knows what he wants to say. Knows the message he wants to send this man and anyone like him.

_ Those Murdock boys _ , he remembers his grandmother saying, can almost remember the way the wrinkles creased her face,  _ they got the Devil in ‘em _ . There’s nothing in Matt now – not even a soul – so he knows there’s no Devil  _ in _ him.

Matt grins, savors the stinging, already-healing pain of the split in his lip.

“Me? I’m the Devil.”

And as long as that means he can keep the City safe, keep people like Eva safe… Well, Matt’s just fine with that. ****


	4. Chapter 4




	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt speaks with a familiar priest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for the Daredevil Bingo prompt: "It's nice to see you again"
> 
> Beta'd by [TheLadyZephyr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLadyZephyr/pseuds/TheLadyZephyr)

He lingers, sometimes, over places of worship while he patrols the rooftops of Manhattan. Mosques, synagogues, churches. They all feel cool to the touch, emanate something bright and holy – but it’s soothing, like aloe on the skin compared to the stinging chill in Matt’s core.

His favorite of all of them is Clinton Church, and the reason why is simple. It’s the church he and his father had gone to. The church whose nuns had taken him in. Not all Matt’s memories of that time are fond, or even good, but it’s a piece of his past and a piece of his faith, and that’s all that really matters. He hides in the shadows of the rooftop – like a gargoyle, he thinks with some amusement – to listen to Evening Mass. To listen to the hymns arcing up to the ceiling of the sanctuary. To feel the crackling heat of dozens of souls gathered together for a single purpose.

The screams and cries and sirens go silent there, just for a while. Matt still can’t drown them out on his own, and he doesn’t have the size or the fortitude to accept them the way the City does. It loves him for this, tells him so, but it also despairs that he finds himself so often drowning in the suffering woven through its streets like the thread of a tapestry. There’s joy, too, so much joy. And love and heroism. But the good things don’t stop the bad ones from happening, and even with as much power as he has, Matt can’t save everyone. He’s picked up deals here and there where he can – rescuing people the only way he knows how anymore. And it’s a thrill, every time, a shock to the system to feel the brush of a soul sealing a pact with him. But there’s still nothing that quite matches the holy peace Matt finds in places of worship.

Drained and struggling and without a single lead except that there seems to be a spike in human trafficking by a new Russian gang – and who even knows if that has anything to do with the City’s enemy? – Matt discards his mask for his suit and tie. He sits on the steps of Clinton church, resting his back against the outer wall and trying to remember how to breathe. He doesn’t need sleep, but he feels like he needs rest, needs to set down his burdens even if it can only be for the moment. The City’s power and its task are both so heavy, and Matt’s only one man. He’ll shoulder both, he will, but… Not yet.

He’s startled, when the door opens, and a— priest, he must be a priest, by the way the fabric of his clothing shifts when he moves – steps out. Pauses, upon seeing him, heart stuttering.

“Matthew…?”

A shiver courses down Matt’s spine. The priest smells of incense and coffee. It’s a scent that tugs at the memory, makes Matt remember feeling small and angry and… Seen. Father Lantom. But there’s a whole new dimension to him now, something new to sense.

His soul has the subtle, welcoming heat of a furnace, but it’s also suffused with holiness, with flecks of glittering brightness that prick at Matt’s skin like ice. Matt rubs furtively at his already-cold arms and forgets to respond.

“Matthew, is it really you…?”

“Hello, Father.”

There’s a gentle sigh. Matt hopes Father Lantom has a wry smile to go with, but there’s no real way of knowing.

“It’s a little chilly out here, Matthew.” The words are a little pointed; Matt hasn’t stopped rubbing at his arms. “Why don’t you come inside? You don’t need to lurk on the doorstep, you know.”

Father Lantom offers his arm, and Matt accepts it, though he’s loath to put too much weight on the old priest as he’s tugged to his feet. Once upright, Matt settles his hand in the bent crook of Father Lantom’s arm. They enter the church together.

For a single breath, Matt has the ridiculous fear that it won’t accept him – that he’ll be forced out or that walking across the threshold will turn him to ash. But he takes one step into Clinton Church, two, three, four, and nothing happens.

Of course it doesn’t. That’s just superstitious garbage. The City’s demons are not the demons of the Bible, they’re something else altogether. But he can still feel the cool, mint-bright holiness suffusing the air, and he knows he’s nothing like  _ that _ either.

“No one’s heard from you in years, Matthew,” Father Lantom says as they take a slow path past the pews. “We feared… Well, given your temperament, we feared the worst. To see you now, a man grown… I admit it brings me a measure of peace that has been missing from my life for many years now.”

Matt tries to smile, but it’s a struggle. The ugly truth argues with the beautiful lie he’s been presented with – both vying for a chance to emerge from behind his clenched teeth.

“I’m glad,” he says at last – true, but not the truth.

“Still…” And there’s the familiar knowing lilt that jolts Matt back to his childhood. “You seem a little troubled, Matthew. Perhaps there’s something you’d like to get off your chest?”

Matt gestures at his glasses and offers a wry smile.

“I can’t say for certain, of course, but I imagine that Confession is over for the day, unless the church schedule has drastically changed in the last ten years.”

“True enough,” Father Lantom agrees amiably. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t talk. I’ve been told I make a decent enough latte. Why don’t you stay for a chat, Matthew? You look like you could use it.”

Matt has no idea how he looks, but he does feel burdened, and… Maybe it would be good to talk. There’s a lot he’ll have to skirt around, of course, but… He doesn’t get chances to act like a person, to hold conversations or talk about his feelings. It’s something he actively avoided as a teenager, full of anger and Stick’s teachings and the laughably naïve feeling that no one could ever understand him. He’s got the City now, of course, but it’s the opposite problem – instead of his experiences being too vast and bizarre to be understood, it’s that he’s so small compared to the City that even as it wholly understands him it can’t quite relate to his humanity.

Now? Now… Everything, every sensation – both good and bad – is vibrant and new. Matt’s not afraid of ‘going soft’ or losing his edge just from a simple conversation. The world is so much bigger than that. And, Matt’s beginning to understand, baffling as it is, that it’s ok to want things. The City wants him to want things for himself, to have desires that it can fulfill or that it can help him fulfill. He thinks maybe God feels the same way.

So he accepts Father Lantom’s invitation, and they sit across from one another with steaming cups in their hands. Even just the smell of the latte is enough to send pleasurable tingles of warmth through Matt’s chest. He hasn’t eaten or drunk anything in eleven years, and the first sip on his tongue is like nothing he’s ever experienced before. It’s so vibrant after such a long time without taste at all that Matt almost imagines he can taste the color of it.

“It’s. It’s good,” he tells Father Lantom, dazed and stunned.

It’s also, he realizes, his first coffee ever. As a teen he’d eschewed the stuff, thinking of Stick railing against stimulants and how they made you jittery, unfocused – how they would mess with Matt’s enhanced senses, make him weak. Matt doesn’t have to worry about weakness now.

“My hidden talent,” comes Father Lantom’s reply, full of amusement, and Matt has to take a minute to string his mind back to their conversation.

He finds, as the coffee slides down his throat, that it provides just a hint of protection from the cold flowing through him. Not enough that it could ever be a true substitute, but… It’s pleasant. He and Father Lantom drink their lattes in companionable silence. Afterwards, Matt fidgets with his cup.

“If you truly don’t want to, you don’t need to tell me anything,” says Father Lantom gently. “But if you need someone to talk to…”

“I think.” Matt swallows. “I think maybe I do.”

There’s no further verbal pressing, which Matt appreciates. He needs… Time, to get his words in order. Father Lantom’s quiet presence and quiet soul both produce a sort of white noise that drowns out the world outside the church. Drowns out even the City. But it doesn’t drown out the chill in Matt’s bones or the dark rage that fills the broken cracks of him. He fidgets with his empty cup, sighs, and finally opens his mouth to speak.

“I’m starting to worry there’s something… Dark in me,” he begins, because he doesn’t regret anything he’s done but he remembers enough to know that taking so much joy in it is… “But it’s powerful too, and I can’t give it up because I need to help people, and this is the only way. It’s just I. I’m so angry, and nothing is ever enough. There’s so much suffering, all around us, and it feels like nothing I do stems the tide. I have to keep going, but I’m… I’m afraid of what I’ll become if I do.”

Father Lantom inhales deeply, and his exhale is a thoughtful hum.

“I see. You’re concerned that you’re using the wrong means. That in trying to do good, you’ll lose sight of your own misdeeds.”

“Something like that,” admits Matt.

It’s a worry he could never openly express to the City, who has granted him this power and this second chance. It’s relying on him. And even— The deal with Eva wasn’t the City’s doing, it was Matt’s own. Is that where the darkness, the wrongness comes from? The desire to fix things or enact justice outside of his sworn purpose?

“Matthew.” Fingertips brush Matt’s knuckles, and when he doesn’t pull away Father Lantom rests one of his own warm hands on Matt’s chilled one. “You’ve always had an anger inside you. But anger itself is not ungodly. To rage at the injustice in the world can be an act of love – as long as it drives you to help others. We don’t, any of us, have the power to right every wrong. But if you can save one person, help one person… You’ve done something wonderful. It’s when you lose sight of the individuals you help or hurt, when you lose sight of the unfathomable love God has – not just for humanity but for every single person – that you begin to make choices that harm others, even if you justify them as helping the collective world. I don’t know the battles you’re fighting, and I suspect you won’t tell me, but I don’t exactly live under a rock, you know.”

Matt’s brow furrows, and a quiet panic begins to overtake him. Trembling, he pulls his hand out of Father Lantom’s grip.

“I. I don’t…”

“I’ve heard rumors,” the priest says idly, and there’s a swish of fabric as he retracts his arm. “About a strange demon. One that doesn’t ask for souls. A demon disguised as a blind man with a Mark that’s red like blood. I’ve also heard rumors that a figure in black likes to rest on the roof of this church. Matthew… You don’t have to hide, you know.”

“I’m. H-hide? I don’t, I’m not—”

But the words ring so false to his own ears that Matt can’t bear continue. He just clenches his jaw and waits for the condemnation, the fear and disgust that’s sure to follow.

“I heard a long time ago, from a very guilty and heartbroken man, that demons were once people,” says Father Lantom instead. “Though I didn’t believe him until now. But it’s you, isn’t it, Matthew?”

Matt nods, tears burning behind his eyes.

“It’s me,” he chokes out.

“I can’t say I condone everything this Devil is rumored to have done. But… I can say that there are people in this city who are safe because of him. And that’s worth commending.”

The flood of relief that swamps Matt then leaves him shaking even harder than the panic had. He breathes through it, manages to keep the tears at bay. There’s so much— So much to realize. That Father Lantom let him inside knowing what he is. That he spoke to him kindly, even knowing the creature standing before him wasn’t human.

Before Matt can stop himself, he’s confessing all of it. The mobsters who took his father’s life, who took  _ his  _ life. The emptiness, the nothingness of the Ether. The City’s enemy. The traffickers.

Father Lantom moves to sit next to Matt instead of across from him, and his soul gives off a low heat that soothes all the hurts until they’re manageable. Until they fit under Matt’s skin again. Father Lantom listens and accepts all of it peacefully, with barely a stutter in his heartbeat.

“It sounds like a daunting task ahead of you,” he tells Matt. “But no matter how difficult the journey ahead is, there’s something you’re wrong about, Matthew. It’s not something you have to face alone.”

Matt smiles mirthlessly.

“Isn’t it?”

“There are people who live in this city that love it, perhaps even as much as you do.” The wry, scolding tone hits Matt just right to induce shame at his own self-centeredness. “There are more players in this game than you and your enemy, you know. Good people. People willing to make a difference.”

“I’m not used to relying on people,” Matt admits.

A quiet laugh falls from Father Lantom’s mouth.

“Yes, I’m well aware. But I find it’s a rewarding exercise, learning how. I’d be honored if it started with me. With this church. You’ve always been welcome here, Matthew,” he says gently. “And you always will be. I hope you remember that now.”

The words bury a seed of warmth in Matt’s chest, just for a second.

“I’ll keep that in mind, Father,” he replies, and can’t help the way his voice comes out a bit rough and emotional.


	6. Chapter 6




	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt saves Karen Page. A father makes a deal for the rescue of his son.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for the Daredevil Bingo prompt: "Voices in your head"
> 
> Beta'd by [TheLadyZephyr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLadyZephyr/pseuds/TheLadyZephyr)

The City feeds the story to him in fragments, after. The assassin – sandalwood, pine, metal – waiting in an apartment that smells of cheap air freshener and old wallpaper. The jagged skritch of a knife on wood. Taste of blood on the teeth, sharp and heady. Soft-fingered hands knocking callused ones out of the way, touching the summoning circle first. Karen Page’s face, a piece of sensory information he can barely parse after so long without sight – beautiful and terrified and wild. Her eyes are blue and her hair is blonde.

In the moment, however, all Matt knows is that he’s being called – that this deal is his, that there is blood in the air, and that he’s walked right into the middle of a fight that the City is certain holds its future in the balance.

“Oh god, please help me,” the woman who summoned him says, and that’s all Matt needs to strike a deal.

When he intercedes between her and the assassin, he can already feel his Mark burning into the soft skin of her inner arm, just below the wrist.

The summoning has him a little off-balance, and he takes a fist to the jaw that’s definitely going to bruise. The assassin hits hard. Matt, teeth sharp and fingers clawed, hits harder. Breaks the assassin’s nose, and when that’s not enough, shatters one of his legs. They grapple and scratch at each other like wild animals, and slam out a second-story window together. The glass does little to Matt beyond a few superficial cuts, and the impact against concrete is jarring but not painful enough that he can’t shrug it off.

In defense of his own life, the assassin is able to drag himself onto his one good leg. The other is crackling with splinters of bone, though the rain soaking the street drowns out any pattering of blood. It makes Matt dizzy, all the input coming at him, each individual drop of rain vying for attention and splintering the whole that Matt tries to piece together. That’s really the only excuse for what happens next.

Searing pain rips through him.

Later, when he’s clear-headed and healed and alone, he’ll be able to recall the click that should have warned him that a switchblade was in play. But with the whole street shattering and reforming around him with each splatter of rain on metal-brick-stone, it passes his notice completely until there’s a blade buried three inches deep between his ribs.

It’s the kind of wound that would kill a human. Matt breathes past it with gritted teeth, but takes a fist to the face as he fumbles to stop the assassin from grabbing the blade again. Whether he means to pull it out or drag it further across Matt’s chest to widen the wound is immaterial – neither of those options is a good or acceptable one.

Matt finishes the fight with a boot to the assassin’s shattered leg and a punch so sweet it’d make Jack Murdock cry. Only when his opponent is laid out on the wet alley does Matt tug the knife out of his body with a hiss. It hurts worse coming out than it did going in, but it heals fast enough to leave him dizzy from the swirl of magic.

Once he’s regained his balance, hand pressed to the rough surface of the brick wall, Matt can sense the woman who summoned him. Her scent is muffled by the rain, and so is her breathing, but the symphony of raindrops hitting her at least loosely denotes her presence, and the heat of her soul makes her unmistakable.

Karen Page. Like all the others, her name comes to mind with barely a thought now that she’s made a deal with him.

Her soul is sharper than any he’s ever encountered, all jagged edges, hot shards of glass. Sharpness isn’t even a quality he’d known souls could have – but Karen Page has it in spades. He doesn’t… He’s not going to choose her, he knows that almost immediately. It’s not that he thinks she’s a bad fit, necessarily. The uniqueness of her soul is alluring in its own way. The violence and brittleness of it meshes well with him, in fact. But there’s still something… Else, a quality he can’t describe even to himself, that he’s looking for. Not more, but different.

“Are.” She pauses, rethinks her words as her pulse spikes loudly enough to be heard over the rainstorm. “Are you ok?”

“I’m fine,” Matt tells her. “And he’ll live, if that’s what you wanted to ask. Why was he trying to kill you?”

“Tell me who you are first,” she demands. “And what you want.”

Cautious. Which is understandable. But they’re in contract, and Matt did just protect her. She’s got nothing to worry about. The City wants her vibrant and defiant and alive. Matt plans to make sure she stays that way. Slowly, he reaches out, focusing hard past the rain to find her wrist, telegraphing his movements. Karen doesn’t pull away, lets him turn her arm over and expose his Mark.

“I’m a demon,” he begins, dry and amused, “although I suppose you’ve figured that out by now. You might know me as the Devil. As for what I want… From you, Miss Page, I haven’t decided yet. But in general, I’m just trying to do the right thing. To protect the City and the people in it. Now. The reason you were targeted is…?”

He releases her then. Karen hesitates, but eventually produces her other fist, wrapped around something small.

“This. I found… The place I was working, I found something I wasn’t supposed to. Evidence of off-the-books orders of summoning supplies, lots of them – and the company funds being embezzled to do it. I’ve got it still, all of it, here on this thumb drive.”

“Good,” Matt says, though he makes no move to remove the drive from Karen’s death grip – it’s her leverage, her point of safety; Matt understands that well enough, remembers the things he clung to when he was scared and alone at St. Agnes’. “We can pass it on to the police.”

“ _ No _ !” There’s a splatter of water as Karen yanks her hand back, presses her fist to her chest. “No, we can’t trust the police.”

Her heart is pounding so wildly Matt can hear it over the drum of the rain. He holds up his hands in a surrender gesture.

“Ok. No police,” he says soothingly. “We’ll…” A thought crosses his mind and a grin crosses his face. “We’ll tell everyone.”

In the end, they leave the mangled assassin and the evidence together on the steps of The Bulletin, with careful instructions and explanations for Ben Urich, the paper’s (and the City’s) well-known investigative journalist. There can’t be a coverup if the story is public. The people so invested in killing Karen won’t have a safe, anonymous avenue to do it anymore. Not with all the attention on their shady dealings. If someone else involved in the case turns up dead, it’ll point right back to them.

“Thanks,” Karen murmurs, reaching out to stall Matt as he turns to leave. “For saving my life.”

Matt’s still cold, but Karen Page’s hand on his shoulder is warm and full of life. That has to be enough for the moment.

“You’re welcome, Miss Page.”

* * *

Matt’s quiet contemplation of the City’s people is ruptured by screaming. A child, screaming for his father. A father, shouting for his son. Snarled threats in— Russian, some of the voices familiar from fights Matt’s been in on the docks. The metallic slide of a van door. The City’s insistent on its importance, a hurried drumming like someone’s tapping rapidly on Matt’s shoulder. He dives off the rooftop he’s on, races towards the disturbance.

Matt’s too late to reach the scene before the van has driven away, but the man, the father, beaten and left behind, is still there. He’s gotten to his feet, but hasn’t made a move either to vainly chase after his kidnapped son or to turn for home.

“Oh god,” he says as he stands there, his voice trembling in his mouth. “Oh god, oh please— Sammy…”

The City pushes, hard. Matt can already feel a devil’s smile creeping across his face. He leaps down into an alley and as the air rushes past him he can feel his form shift. The horns vanish, and so does the mask. The business suit and round glasses reappear. His teeth shift in his mouth, become disarmingly flat and human. There’s a cane in his hand. Matt uses it, taps his way slowly out into the buzz of streetlights until he’s standing before his— client.

“Hello,” he says to the man.

“The— the hell do you want?” comes the spluttered response.

Matt, impatient, flashes a smile with one too many teeth and relishes in the way the man –  **John Calvin** , the City murmurs sweetly – begins to sweat with fear. His heart is racing like a rabbit’s. Matt smiles wider.

“You sound like maybe you’d like to make a deal,” murmurs Matt.

“Demon.”

No one could accuse him of lacking a sense of theatrics. Matt takes a deep, flourishing bow.

“Guilty as charged.”

“You— you stay away from me!”

But Matt’s not so easily dissuaded, especially not with the City hovering over him like an eager parent. He tries a different angle of attack.

“I’m sure you’ll do just fine getting little Sammy back on your own, then,” he says lightly, turning as though he means to leave. “Against an entire bratva. Before they ship him out of the country to be sold.”

Matt only has to take four steps before he hears,

“Wait!”

And as soon as his intentions shift, Matt can sense it. He pauses, turns his head back as if he’s looking – knows sighted people respond to cues like that.

“Yes?”

“What kind of… What kind of deal?” John Calvin asks warily.

“A simple one,” Matt answers, turning to face him fully. “Nothing too strenuous. Tell me everything you know about the Russians, and I’ll return your son to you – safe and sound.”

John Calvin’s heart jumps, and the acrid smell of fear sweat fills the air. Still, he hasn’t run off screaming. Matt waits him out patiently, hands on his cane and head tilted slightly to the left.

“If I talk, they’ll. They’ll come after me, after Sammy, even if you get him back, I—”

“None of this will get back to you. And I’ll… Deal with the Russians soon enough,” Matt promises, flashing another sharp-toothed smile that sends John Calvin’s heart racing.

And yet, paradoxically, it also seems to steel his resolve as much as it frightens him.

“I’ll do it.”

The deal is struck. They shake hands, firmly. It’s John Calvin who pulls away with a hiss at the burn of Matt’s Mark forming on the skin of his palm. Matt folds his own hands back over his cane with a serene smile.

“Go home, Mr. Calvin. Rest. You’ll see your son soon.”


	8. Chapter 8




	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Saving Sammy Calvin doesn't go as planned. On the bright side, Matt meets Claire Temple.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for the Daredevil Bingo prompt: "Stitches"
> 
> Beta'd by [TheLadyZephyr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLadyZephyr/pseuds/TheLadyZephyr)

For all his power, Matt is just as susceptible to iron as any other demon. Even his magical constructs – armor, weapons – shatter under its touch like glass. Finding this out because he’s been shot and sliced to within an inch of his nonexistent life is… Not great. The City is wailing, panicking just as much as Matt is. It urges him to get up in his father’s voice –  **_gotta keep going, Matty, come on_ ** – and shifts the obstacles away from his feet. Even then, it’s a miracle Matt makes it out alive. A miracle he stumbles his way down a maze of side streets until he can collapse in a dumpster to hide.

He'd tracked the Russians, and the boy, as quickly as he could. But they’d known he was coming. Must have, because every man was armed to the teeth with iron and the boy was nowhere to be found. They’d turned him around somehow, pulled a switch and he hadn’t detected it. But he doesn’t even have the energy left to berate himself. Barely has the energy to breathe. One by one, his senses crackle and fade.

His mind gives one last, dizzied gasp of fear, and then he’s gone.

* * *

Matt wakes with a start, and the only thing familiar about the world around him is the pain coursing through his body. He’s… Inside. An apartment, probably. There’s cushions under his back – a couch. And he’s not alone. A woman. Matt struggles to sit as he takes her in, only then realizing his wounds have been stitched and bandaged.

The woman’s soul is steadier, more solid than any he’s ever witnessed – doesn’t flicker or waver the way others do. Just glows constant and deep. It puts him in mind of a hot bath, of safety and healing and protective strength. The steadfastness of that soul takes the edge off the way she trails hospital scents – antiseptic, latex, lemon floor cleaner. There’s nothing wrong with nurses – and Matt’s exceedingly lucky she happens to be one, given the state she must have found him in – but he’d never gotten over the trauma of coming to, newly blind with enhanced senses, in a place that smelled of clean and blood and death and sounded like Hell itself.

The City trills a little at the base of Matt’s skull. It’s proud of this nurse, proud that she’s one of its people.

**Isn’t she perfect?** It croons.  **Can’t you feel her?**

And he can. He can. She’s really something special.

“Finally awake for real?” she asks, and manages to sound both resigned and gentle.

“For real?” rasps Matt, swaying as he tries to sit up.

“You’ve been in and out for the last half hour, mostly delirious. Ordered me not to call the hospital, said someone was coming to kill you, tried to walk out and hit the floor like a sack of potatoes. You know, the usual order for fools I pull out of my dumpster.”

“Do this a lot, do you?” he asks. “Most people would just call the police if they found a masked man half-dead in their dumpster.”

She shifts her weight so minutely Matt can barely hear it, but everything about her radiates discomfort.

“I’m an ER nurse. I work the night shift a lot. And I’ve heard stories recently, about a man in black. The people he hurts… And the people he saves,” she explains. “Let’s say I’m invested in hearing your side of the story. Especially since you don’t seem to be freaked out by your current lack of vision.”

Matt chuckles, then hisses as it jostles a rib injury.

“Yeah, that’s… The blindness isn’t new.”

“And yet you still go out there and get into fistfights with mobsters?” demands the nurse.

Offering an insincere smile, Matt shrugs as best he can.

“It’s a hobby.” And then the City nudges him and he remembers how much the woman’s done for him and feels a little bad. “Thank you. For this. I probably wouldn’t have made it without you.”

Another shift in the nurse’s posture, and Matt tilts his head to try and discern more. Her heartbeat spikes and then settles.

“I don’t know about that. Some of this healed up fast,” she notes flatly. “Too fast. Which is the only reason I didn’t dump your ass into an ambulance as soon as I pulled you out of the trash.”

Matt rubs a hand over his mouth.

“Look. The, the less you know about me the better.”

There’s a long, judgmental silence.

“Are you seriously going to make me hunt down some iron to test it myself, or will you just admit you’re a demon?”

Matt lets his head fall back against the armrest of the couch.

“Fine. I’m a demon,” he says. “But I’m not… I don’t want to steal anyone’s soul. I just want to help. To protect people.”

She takes two steps in the direction Matt’s feet are pointed, then two steps back. Her breaths are quiet and even, and Matt gets the sense she’s thinking over her response very thoroughly. Finally, her pacing stops.

“It’s not impossible,” she says. “But demons are liars when they’re not bound by a deal to tell the truth.”

Which is true. The nurse is right to be cautious, no matter how good Matt’s motives are — she has no way to know them for sure. Still, he thinks she’s probably leaning closer to believing him than not. So Matt decides to push the envelope a little and see what happens.

“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell me your name, given that,” he says wryly.

A flicker of angry heat goes through the nurse then — but only her body; her soul remains as calming and placid as before.

“Claire,” she tells him very purposely, as if to say ‘that’s all you’re going to get’. “I don’t suppose you have one to give me.” He does, but most demons wouldn’t, so he just offers a halfhearted shrug. “Guess I’ll just call you Mike then.”

Matt tilts his head.

“Mike?”

“An ex. He was pretty good at keeping secrets too.”

“I–”

His words cut out with a wheeze. There’s been a low-level pain in his chest since his fight with the Russian mobsters, but this is different. Sharp and sudden, stabbing pain. And though he would have sworn only minutes ago that he didn’t  _ need _ to breathe for all that he did it out of habit, Matt can’t seem to catch his breath.

“Hey!” he hears Claire distantly, and there’s a warm pressure on his shoulder. “What is it, what hurts?”

“Can’t,” Matt manages to gasp out. “Can’t breathe.”

And then the pain blitzes out all of Matt’s other senses, so that he’s drifting in his pain. So insulated from everything else that he can’t hear Claire anymore, can’t feel the heat of her soul, can’t smell the apartment around him. It could be minutes or hours before he comes out of it, he has no way of knowing.

Sluggishly, he presses the heel of one palm to his head, scrubbing away the sweat there.

“What… What…?”

“Your lung was collapsing,” Claire says tightly. “I saved your life. Again. So I think it’s time you explain, in detail, why I’m standing here risking a demon kicking the bucket in my apartment. And it better be good.”

So he tells her. About the Russians, the trafficking, the boy they took. Matt’s deal with John Calvin. The ambush.

“I’ve put you in the line of fire now too, just by being here. And I’m sorry. All I, all I can really offer you is a deal. My protection. Keep my secret and I’ll keep you safe,” Matt promises.

He can’t see Claire’s expression, obviously, but by her tone and what the way she shifts her weight tells him about her posture, he can imagine it’s full of skepticism.

“ _ You’ll _ keep  _ me _ safe?” she demands. “Who almost died of a punctured lung three minutes ago?”

Which is. That’s fair. But he  _ didn’t _ die, and he knows now what he’s up against.

“I’ll be more careful when I fight them again,” he says certainly, which only prompts a disbelieving scoff.

Any defense he could make for himself dries up when a sharp, ugly smell hits his nose. Matt recognizes the excessive cologne; cheap and layered thickly. One of his attackers. One of the Russians. And Matt’s all but led him right to Claire’s door. Her insulting lack of faith in him can wait. He needs to keep her, and everyone else in the building, alive. His mask is laying next to his hip on the couch, so he grabs it and shoves it on.

“There’s a man,” he says, leaning heavily on the arm of the couch as he levers to his feet, fumbling towards what he thinks is the front door, focusing all his senses on the Russian. “Going door to door asking questions. Two– two floors down. One of them. Smells like discount cologne and Prima cigarettes.”

“ _ What _ ?” demands Claire. “You can smell a man’s cologne from two floors away? Is that a demon thing?”

Matt shakes his head, though it nearly unbalances him and he has to catch himself on her door frame.

“Nah. Just a me thing. But you’ll be able to smell him too soon enough,” he replies with a rasping laugh. “He  _ really _ likes that cologne.”

There’s a distant clattering of feet on stairs, another knock, another polite conversation. He’s impersonating a police officer. It’s a decent play. And the fake American accent’s pretty good, Matt thinks, cheek pressed to the wall. Hazily, he extends a hand, tries to summon a weapon. The magic fizzes against his fingertips, but nothing forms. With a huff of frustration, he instead moves to transform his fingers into claws.

“What are you planning to do with those?” Claire asks. “You can barely stand.”

“Barely standing means still standing. And they’re sharp enough to do the job.”

Claire curses heartily under her breath, in Spanish if Matt’s ears are serving him correctly, and badgers him away from her door. With a slow and patient frustration, she explains to him that she’s just going to answer the door when the Russian knocks. She’s going to tell him she doesn’t know anything and then close the door and that’ll be that, no need for further violence, especially the kind that could ruin her stitches. She’s very convincing, although Matt has no idea how well she can lie. He stays hidden where she put him, but tense and ready to spring into action if he needs to protect her.

When the door finally opens to the Russian, the smell of him is enough to make Matt cringe. That’s not even mentioning the burning oil-slick heat of his soul. Worst of all is that he spins a very convincing story, speaks so reasonably as he makes Matt out to be a crazed killer. There’s no way to know if Claire’s racing heart is because she’s rightfully afraid of the mobster in front of her or because she’s starting to believe his words. But in the end, she keeps his secret. Doesn’t turn him in. Not that it’s much consolation, because he can hear the Russian’s heartbeat stumble and spike at Claire’s lies. He makes as though he’s leaving, lets Claire close her door between them, but as soon as he’s back in the hall he jogs down a floor and pulls out what must, by its beeping, be a phone.

“See?” Claire asks. “No need for violence.”

“He didn’t believe you,” Matt warns her, frowning as he tries to pick out any part of the phone call that isn’t in Russian. “He’s calling his superiors, I’d guess.”

And Matt can’t, he  _ can not _ have an army of Russian mobsters descend on this apartment building, putting everyone living here in danger. So he steadies himself and limps to Claire’s door. Twists the doorknob. Steps out. His senses are out of whack, but he still manages to find what he’s looking for. Claire trails behind him.

“What are you doing?” she hisses as he hefts up the hall’s fire extinguisher and dangles it over the railing of the staircase.

Matt shrugs. He could go down there and fight the Russian and take another beating and cause a disturbance. He could. But sometimes, Matt thinks, simple is best. He drops the fire extinguisher.

“Oh my god,” Claire snaps in the aftermath, following him as he trots down the stairs to collect the unconscious mobster. “You idiot, you could have killed him! Blunt force trauma to the head is not a safe way to knock a guy out!”

Matt shrugs, then crouches down, wincing, to heft the Russian over his shoulder. His stitches pull painfully, but there’s no lukewarm wetness dripping down his side so they apparently hold. He’s already steadier on his feet than he was a minute ago, at least. One perk of his access to the City’s fathomless and unsettling well of magic.

“He’s fine,” Matt says at last, turning back up the stairs. “I’d hear if he had any serious head trauma. I think.”

“That’s not reassuring!”

Which is fair, Matt supposes, especially to a nurse. He shrugs with his empty shoulder.

“You don’t have to come,” he offers when he passes Claire’s apartment door and she doesn’t go back in. “I’m not exactly an expert but I’m guessing this isn’t going to be pretty.”

She scoffs.

“I’m a nurse. I can handle it. And it’s pretty clear you have no idea how to keep a human alive – if I leave you alone with him, I’m liable to find a corpse on the roof tomorrow morning.”

And that’s… Yeah, that’s also a fair consideration. Humans are tough, but they’re paradoxically delicate too. It might be better to have Claire along, to gauge how far Matt can safely go when questioning the Russian.

“You should get something to cover your face,” he suggests. “If you’re really going to do this.”

Claire ducks determinedly into her apartment and comes back with fabric bunched in her hands. A… Shirt, maybe. Matt smiles, considers asking her what color it is, but holds off. And then there’s a creak. Matt freezes, all his senses focused on the heavy breathing and thundering heartbeat above them.

“Someone’s watching us,” he murmurs to Claire. “Young. One floor up.”

A door snaps shut, and Claire’s head whips around to follow it.

“Ah. That’s Santino. He’s the one who found you – you know, in the  _ dumpster _ ? – and helped me carry you to my apartment.”

“So he’s seen my face too?” Matt asks, cringing at the thought.

He doesn’t have a secret identity, per se, but it’s been easier to blend in during the day in a suit and tie. He doesn’t want Hunters gunning for him.

“Yes,” Claire says. “But I’ve told him not to tell anyone about you. You’re not the only one with something to lose if news of you being here gets out.”

Those seem to be her final words on the subject, and she’s done everything he asked her to so far, so Matt decides to give Claire a little trust. He nods and continues up the stairs to the roof. Once outside, it’s a little easier still to breathe, like the City’s magic is thicker out in the open air and it’s eager to heal him.

Setting the mobster down, Matt tries again to form a construct. With barely a thought, a long chain materializes in his hands. Constructs really are useful, Matt muses as he chains his unconscious prisoner to some structure near the edge of the roof. Distantly, he can hear Claire tying her makeshift mask over her face. Then, all there is to do is wait until their prisoner wakes.

It doesn’t take him long, which Matt figures is probably a good sign that he shouldn’t have irreparable brain damage. He comes to with a groan of pain that satisfies the dark, vindictive corners of Matt’s mind.

“Here’s how this is gonna work,” Matt explains, stroking his fingers across the chains and listening to them rattle as they tighten, listening to the Russian’s gasp of pain. “I’m gonna ask you some questions. You’re gonna answer them. If you’re lying to me, trust that I will know and I will be–” He manifests a claw, scrapes it across a chain link with a horrible screech– “ _ unhappy _ . Now. Where’s the boy?”

“He’s dead,” spits the Russian, and his heart stutters.

It could indicate fear, but it doesn’t. If the Calvin boy was dead, Mat’s deal with John Calvin would be nullified – and his flickering awareness of John’s soul would disappear. So. A lie. Matt drives a fist into the mobster’s stomach, somewhere that isn’t covered by chains. Once. Twice. Three times.

“In case it wasn’t clear,” Matt says, “this is me unhappy. Tell me where he is.”

“Doesn’t matter,” answers the Russian, coughing. “If he’s not dead yet, he will be. And you too if you go after him again. We fucked you up good, didn’t we? You think they aren’t armed to the teeth with iron where he is?”

Matt traces the Russian’s eye socket with the pointed tip of one massive claw, and smiles serenely.

“I could stab it or pop it out,” he explains in a low, conversational tone. “Your eye. I’m not really picky. Whatever works. I’m not asking for your speculation about what will happen, I’m asking where the boy is now.”

“Fuck you.”

Matt, mouth full of pointed teeth, moves to stab his claw into the man’s eye.

“Wait!”

But that’s not his prey. It’s Claire. Matt pauses, lifts his hand away a little to show he’s listening.

“Yes?” he asks.

“Try stabbing him in his trigeminal nerve,” suggests Claire; her heart is pounding frantically, her soothing soul frothing with fear, but her voice is utterly calm.

And, well, Matt’s not about to turn down a little assistance.

“Where is it?” he asks, tilting his head back towards her in a simulation of sight as he returns to trailing his claw around the Russian’s eye socket.

Claire takes three stumbling steps forward, and places a hand on Matt’s, directs him carefully to the proper place. Once she’s released him, Matt stabs his claw in. The Russian screams. He doesn’t stop until the screaming has died out into ragged panting.

“Even if you find him, so what? We’ll take another. You kill me, someone will take my place. Long as people are buying, we’ll be selling. Nothing you do tonight will change that.”

Something twists in the area of Matt’s stomach, a pain sharp enough that Matt has to grit his teeth against it. He wants to scare the man in front of him, put the fear of God into him in a way that pain doesn’t seem to.

**Semyon** , the City tells him suddenly, quiet and cold.  **His name is Semyon.**

Matt smiles a smile full of sharp teeth.

“You’re right, of course,” he admits to Semyon, shrugging. “But what you don’t seem to understand is that I’ve got all night. I’ve got enough power to personally tear through the rib cage of every person in your organization. Eventually, one of you will break and give me what I want. And in the meantime? I’ll enjoy every second. You think you’ve seen what I can do, but let me assure you that’s nothing. The others weren’t worth the effort of torturing, but you? I’ll happily open you up and show you your organs one by one. I am so, so cold, Semyon, and your blood is nice and warm. It’s no chore for me to bathe in it.”

Slowly, knowingly, Matt reaches his clawed hand towards Semyon’s unprotected belly.

“Troika!” the Russian screams before the claws even touch skin. “They have him under Troika Restaurant! On Eleventh and 44th!”

Matt’s mouth splits in a wide, fanged grin.

“Now see? Was that so hard?”

An ugly, slimy glob of saliva hits Matt’s cheek. 

“They’ll be waiting for you. Just like before. If you’re lucky, they’ll kill you before they start in on the boy,” Semyon spits, delirious and wild. “It would be a shame for you to have to watch what they do to him.”

Matt tilts his head, listens to the words, the complete lack of remorse. The chains around Semyon vanish with a crack. And then, with one arm, Matt dumps him over the side of the building. 

“Oh my god,” Claire gasps.

“He’ll live,” Matt reassures her, jerking his head towards the ledge. “I threw him into the dumpster you found me in.”

And Semyon lands in the dumpster, yes, but the fall is something like four floors. It’s not kind to him. On the other hand, he  _ is _ alive, which is as much mercy as Matt’s willing to extend at the moment. He could have killed him, tossed him a little further left so he hit pavement and snapped his spine. Could have ripped him open with claws and teeth right on the rooftop. But there’s a quiet, pleading little voice inside him – small, weak, it sounds like what he remembers of his voice at the age of ten, pleading with Stick for mercy that wouldn’t come – and it stays his hand.

The City likes his fury, but it likes that quiet voice too.

“You realize ‘he’ll live’ isn’t exactly a reassuring sentiment, especially coming from you,” mutters Claire, tugging the makeshift mask off her face with a swish of fabric. “I should still call an ambulance for him.”

She’s a healer, so he doesn’t begrudge her that. But she needs to look out for her own safety in addition to everyone else’s.

“Do you have somewhere else you can stay?” Matt asks. “Somewhere safe? The second you call this in, they’ll hear about it.”

A gust of breath warms the air as Claire sighs. She rubs a hand over her face, then scrapes her fingers through her hair, dislodging a muted coconut scent.

“Right,” she says. “Right. I’ve been cat-sitting for a woman I work with. She’s out of town right now, her place is empty.”

“Good.”

They make their way back to Claire’s apartment. Matt could just leave for Troika, should just leave. But as calm as she seems outwardly, Matt can practically feel the adrenaline buzzing through her. And, well...

“So. I won’t press again if you say no,” he says, after Claire’s door is closed behind them, “but…”

Matt offers his hand to shake. There’s a hitched breath, a moment of hesitation. But then Claire’s soft, elegant hand is clasped in his own.

“I keep your secret, you keep me safe,” she reiterates.

“I swear.”

“Then it’s a deal.”

Claire’s shoulder glows warm as Matt’s Mark appears on it. There’s a sigh as she drops his hand, but it seems more amused than irritated.

“I suppose I won’t be wearing a bathing suit anytime soon,” she quips.

“You could tell people you got a tattoo,” suggests Matt with an answering smile. “I… I have to go to Troika now. Start packing. Don’t open the door for anyone. I’ll come see you after I get the boy home, and then I’ll walk you to your coworker’s place.”

Claire’s breath catches sharply.

“What!  _ No _ . You almost  _ died _ ! You’re in no shape to—”

“Claire.” He grabs her by the shoulders, as gently as he can. “I need to save that boy. I made a deal. If the Russians get him out of the city, I’ll never find him again.”

She hisses a breath in between her teeth, and he can feel her whole body go rigid even as the beat of her heart strains with anger.

“Fine.  _ Fine _ . Then just, at least… Just let me…”

She pulls out of his grip and moves further into the apartment. There’s some rustling, rummaging. Clatter of plastic and metal, soft rub of fabric. After several minutes, Claire returns and sets what she’s gathered in Matt’s hands. A pair of gloves.

He trails his fingers over the fabric. It’s thin, but it’s real – not a construct of his magic, which means it should hold up against iron – won’t keep the impact of it from bruising, but it should keep it from touching his skin and burning him. More than that, it’s a gift given with the intent to protect him. And in the bounds of the City, swimming in all that ambient magic, that is a very powerful thing. Matt smiles and slips them on.

“Thank you, Claire.”

“Just don’t get killed, ok?”

Matt’s smile probably has too many teeth, too sharp, but the grin doesn’t seem to startle Claire at all.

“I won’t,” he tells her, tracing an X over his chest. “Cross my heart.”

* * *

Matt lingers a few seconds in the alley outside Troika, listening, reaching out with his senses.

There must be at least fifteen men inside. Their souls don’t burn less hotly than any of the others Matt’s encountered, but the heat of them is ugly. Acrid and greasy and wrong. Full of malice, greed, apathy. More than one gives off a tinny counter-frequency Matt can’t place, not until the City traces invisible fingers over the underside of Matt’s wrist in the shape of his Mark, gives him a gentle thought-nudge.

Other demons’ Marks, he realizes. These men have made deals. There’s no way to know for what, but that doesn’t spur Matt to caution. Especially not when he finally catches the unsteady beat of the Calvin boy’s heart.

Matt takes a deep breath, feels every pain that’s started healing and every pain that hasn’t and pushes past them all. He’s going to go in and he’s going to come out with the boy. For the life of a child, Matt would fight twice as many men, in worse shape than he’s in now. It doesn’t mean he’s going to be an idiot about this, but no matter what he’s getting Sammy Calvin free. Tonight.

The door to the building isn’t even locked; it twists open easily under Matt’s hand. He steps inside, trails a gloved hand lightly along the wall as he walks towards the fight that’s waiting for him. Doesn’t even bother trying to disguise his presence, just keeps walking until the yelling tells him he’s been spotted.

Matt doesn’t speak Russian, of course, but he’s– pretty sure whatever they’re saying isn’t complimentary. He doesn’t mind. He’s hardly got anything nice to say to them either. And he’s  _ very _ excited to say it with his fists.

In that regard, the hallway is a revelation. Long and narrow and enclosed, a space he can control perfectly. Matt launches off the walls to give extra momentum to his kicks, knocks heads into them. He takes the barrel of a gun – too unwieldy for such close quarters – to the face, but it doesn’t burn like iron. He can push past it. Knees the guy in the groin, shoulders him into the doorway so he collapses on top of the two men still pushing to get out into the fray.

Of course, that’s when he gets clocked in the shoulder with the iron pipe. It burns through his shirt to the skin beneath, and Matt can’t quite silence the strangled scream it pulls from his throat. But the pain doesn’t stop him. Pain has never stopped him, and now it only makes the City’s magic seethe under his skin.

He grabs the pipe with a gloved hand, wrenches it out of his opponent’s grip with a smile full of bloodied fangs. And then he swings it back. The end connects against the man’s jaw with a crack. It might take a few teeth with it.

The more the Russians try to box him in, the easier it is to fight them. He can swing his fist, swipe his foot, fling a constructed escrima stick, in any direction and it’ll connect. There’s no wrong target. The souls around him burn hot with anger, but none of them as hot as the compulsion to complete his deal with John Calvin. And even that’s barely a spark compared to the ugly, bloodthirsty rage that pulses through Matt like a heartbeat. If he could see, he’d be seeing red. Instead, he tastes that redness in the air. Feels blood on his tongue and wants more, more.

He doesn’t stop until he’s the only thing in the hallway that’s still moving.

With the loss of the fight, of its energy, all the pain surges back. He’s ripped Claire’s stitches. There are new wounds, new burns, and only some of them are healing. Matt sags against the wall, uses it to brace his weight as he stumbles over prone bodies towards his goal: the door at the end.

It takes an eternity to reach it, but it’s unlocked. Matt pushes the door open, and Sammy Calvin’s heartbeat spikes in fear. Matt holds up his hands, palm out. He pulls off the mask instead of letting it fade, crouches down so he and the boy should be roughly at eye level.

“Hey there,” he greets quietly. “You’re Sammy, right?”

“Mmhmm.”

There’s probably a nod, but Matt’s hearing’s a bit fucked up from the blows to his head so he’s not completely sure.

“I know you’re scared. But I’m here to help you. You don’t have to be scared anymore, ok?” Matt says.

There’s some understandable hesitation –  _ stranger danger _ , he thinks wryly.

“You gotta pinkie swear,” Sammy mumbles at last, lifting his small hand with the tiniest whuff of air.

Matt peels off a glove. With the barest brushes of his fingertips, he feels out the boy’s hand and links their pinkies.

“I swear, you’ll be safe now.”

The deal is struck. Matt’s Mark forms with a pulse of heat – right at the nape of Sammy Calvin’s neck. Once they unlock pinkies, Sammy clambers into Matt’s arms. That’s probably for the best, considering both how far they likely have to go until he can get Sammy home, and the state of the hallway.

“Your dad sent me to come get you,” Matt explains quietly. “To bring you home. Would you like that? For me to take you home to your dad?”

A nod against his throat. Matt strokes a hand over the boy’s head, through the short, rough curls of his hair, and stands.

“Ok. Ok. Shhh,” he soothes. “I’ve got you, Sammy.”

He tucks Sammy’s face into his neck as they pass through the minefield of bloodied, unconscious gangsters. Carries him home, follows the roads the City nudges him towards until he can feel the ambient, restless heat of John Calvin’s soul, can hear his panicked heartbeat, his footfalls as he paces his apartment. The building has an intercom system, but Matt’s not sure which button is the right one. Thankfully, his charge has it covered.

“Yes?” asks Mr. Calvin’s voice, strained and frantic.

“Daddy, I’m home now. Please let us in.”

They’re buzzed inside almost before the words have finished falling past Sammy’s lips. Carefully, Matt sets the boy down on his feet – and when Sammy reaches for his hand, Matt takes it. Lets himself be led along like a pet or a new friend, up two flights of stairs and past three doors. The fourth is already open, and Sammy finally lets go of Matt’s hand to fling himself into his father’s arms.

“Dad. Daddy…”

“I’ve got you,” John soothes raggedly. “I’ve got you, Sammy. Shhh… I’ve got you, I’m here.”

* * *

Once Sammy is tucked safely into bed, John Calvin sits across from Matt at a worn dining table so familiar it could have been the one from the Murdock apartment twenty years ago. And then he tells Matt everything he knows.

The Russians are relatively new in town, but they’re working with someone else. Someone new, whose name everyone fears to speak. The rumors say he’s a demon. Though they’re mostly human traffickers, the Russians have been getting into drug transport recently. Heroin, John thinks. The Chinese have the market on that, but there hasn’t been a gang war over it yet so they might have a treaty worked out. The two bosses of the bratva, brothers, both have the same Mark on the back of their right hands.

It’s not clear when John describes it, so he draws it for Matt. Digs his pen deep into the scrap of paper until Matt can pull off a glove and make out the design with his fingertips. A rectangle with rounded edges, with a triangle inside it, and two concentric circles inside that. It’s not a symbol Matt recognizes from anywhere, but the City shivers as Matt reconstructs it in his mind.

“That’s. That’s all I know, I swear. I swear.”

John’s nervous, but his heart is steady. Matt folds up the paper and tucks it away in a pocket. He nods.

“Then our deal is complete.”

There’s a massive sigh of relief. Matt makes his way out the door of the apartment. As he does, John Calvin’s Mark fades.

His son’s does not.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claire gets taken, and Matt lets the devil out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for the Daredevil Bingo prompt: "The gloves are off"
> 
> Beta'd by [TheLadyZephyr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLadyZephyr/pseuds/TheLadyZephyr)

Matt could close out the contract with Eva at any time. It’s pretty clear she’s taking their deal seriously – instead of silent sobs, her bedroom is filled with the eager sound of turning pages, the clumsy scribble of pencil on paper. Matt and the City both like that much better.

So, really, Matt could let the connection between them close, let his Mark fade off her skin. He doesn’t, though.

It’s just he… He  _ likes _ having that connection. With her and all the others – likes knowing they’re his to protect, likes feeling them safe and sound and alive and… Happy. They don’t belong to him, their souls don’t – it doesn’t negate the chill in his bones – but it staves off the worst of it. More than that, though, their happiness makes him happy too. It’s something to hold close, armor against the screams and cries that fill the streets, the million hurts he can’t soothe. He wonders, feeling the distant flicker of all his— all his  _ people _ , if this is something like what the City feels. 

He’s sitting on a rooftop, sifting through the threads that tie him to his humans, when a shiver ripples through him, and a feeling like being— tugged. A flash of fear, of panic lacing through the steady pulse of Claire’s phantom soul in his fingertips. Matt’s running before he knows where his connection to Claire is leading him, but it doesn’t matter. He has to reach her. Rooftops fall away from under his feet. He barely feels them, barely notices the distance he’s crossing.

Then the tug of Claire’s fear cuts off suddenly, and the chill that goes through Matt then has nothing to do with the desire for a soul that haunts his bones. This is worse even than that, more debilitating. It almost sends him to his knees in despair. Trembling, Matt has to catch his breath, gloved fingers flexing against the ledge of the rooftop he’s on.

If he jumps now, he’ll only fall.

Gone. She’s. He promised to protect her and she’s.

A swirl of wind strokes his jaw, and then dips down to play against the fabric of Matt’s gloves.

His gloves from Claire. The ones that still glow warm with her goodwill.

Finally, Matt’s able to take a full inhale again. Unconscious, he realizes with shaking giddiness. She’s just unconscious, that’s why he can’t feel her. Unconscious, not dead. He can still find her. Still save her. But only if he can find her.

He hadn’t been able to track her presence to its source before she’d been knocked out, but Matt knows his city like it knows him – knows the route he’s on. Claire had been home. At her apartment. Matt makes his way there as quickly as he can. It’s not enough, not fast enough, because by the time he gets there her apartment is empty and he can’t hear her heartbeat anywhere. Still, he slips inside through an unlocked window – his usual method of entry – because maybe there’s a clue, maybe he can pick up something that will lead him to her captors.

There’s broken glass on the floor, and it crunches under his boots. The slightest whiff of blood, Claire’s. Car smells — gasoline, metal, exhaust fumes. But there’s nothing else. Nothing useful. Matt digs so deeply into the apartment that he doesn’t hear the door open until it’s too late. He turns, shifts into something monstrous, a horned, clawed thing.

Only too late does he recognize the fluttering heartbeat. Santino. Without a sound, the boy whirls around and runs. But he doesn’t go far. He bars himself in his apartment, one floor up. But Matt’s the City’s favorite, and it nudges him towards an unlocked window. He ducks inside.

There’s a clatter. Something swiped off a table. Matt tilts his head, takes a whiff of air. Brass, roughly in a t shape. A cross.

Santino bares the brass cross at him, shaking. It doesn’t work that way, Matt’s not that kind of demon, but the boy is frightened so Matt stays back of his own volition. His horns recede, and he holds up his hands, palm-out. Santino is stammering his way through a prayer of protection.

“Santino.”

That freezes the boy up quickly enough, gives Matt time to reach into the dusty nooks of his mind for half-remembered high school Spanish lessons. He manages to fumble his way through an apology and a reassurance he isn’t sure helps, but when he lifts his mask Santino recognizes him. That settled, Matt asks where Claire is. It’s far from eloquent, though it hopefully gets the point across.

But then, maybe Matt’s linguistic incompetence is good for something, since it seems to calm Santino down a little. He stops shaking, lowers the ineffectual cross a little, and when he speaks it’s slow and clear, as if to a child. Matt is endlessly grateful.

Santino explains how the men who took Claire hurt him. How they took him to the roof and threatened him, threatened to hurt his mother if he talked. Matt can’t tell anymore if he’s running hot or cold, but he’s trembling with rage. He wants to gut every one of the Russians, strangle them with their own entrails. But that will have to wait until he can find them. Until he can find Claire. So Matt asks Santino for more detail, for anything more he can remember.

Shakily, Santino tells him about a taxi that the men got into, in the front like it was theirs. Tells him the name of the company written on the side.

Veles Taxi.

The City sends a rush of magic up Matt’s spine like an urging hand, excited. The name, it seems, is the last piece of the puzzle it needs to pare its everywhere-everything-everyone knowledge down enough for Matt’s mind to palate it, because suddenly the Veles Taxi garage is glowing like a beacon in his mind’s eye. It’s blocks away but he can feel it – concrete and metal and glass – like it’s beneath his fingertips. Can smell gasoline and grease and blood as if he’s already there. It’s a dizzying sensation, and it throws Matt’s senses for a loop. He sways on his feet, catches himself against the wall of Claire’s apartment with a ragged gasp. Everything shifts, sways, goes completely out of focus.

When Matt comes back to himself, he’s sitting on the floor and Santino is patting at his cheek with a trembling hand.

“I’m ok. I.” Matt struggles for the words, presses a palm to his head. “I know where to go now. I’ll bring her back. I. I’ll bring her back.”

He doesn’t wait for a response from Santino, just stumbles out the window and back onto the rooftops.

* * *

Matt’s still a few blocks away when his connection to Claire flickers back to life, when she wakes and the men start interrogating her, but he’s close enough to hear when one of the Russians cracks Claire’s arm with a bat. Her pain flares through his own arm, and the concrete of the ledge under his hand crumbles to dust. But he can smell the iron in the building, and it’s a lot. He needs one more advantage first.

Matt sneaks inside, pulls off one of Claire’s gloves, and cuts the power with a single massive claw. With a crack, the lights in the building go out, their low buzzing silenced. One of the Russians orders another to check the breaker. Matt flexes his hand, shifts it back human, and puts on his glove again. Claire, still breathing shakily in obvious pain, starts to laugh.

“You want to know his name?” she spits. “Why don’t you ask him?”

The man next to her hits her in the face. In the quiet, it rings in Matt’s ears like a gunshot, and his rage is so potent it ignites. The garage crackles with flames and Matt dances between them to tear into the men who dared lay a hand on Claire. Even the pain of iron from the pipes they’re using as weapons is nothing compared to the storm of violence in Matt’s bones. He puts them down fast and hard, picks through their ranks until he finds the man who’d taken a bat to Claire’s arm, the one who slapped her.

The Russians are working with Matt’s enemy – the City’s enemy. Which means they’re fair game. Above and beyond protecting Claire to honor their deal, Matt’s deal with the City allows him to do as he pleases with these men. And what pleases Matt is violence and blood and gore.

He doesn’t bother with constructs, just hits and hits and hits with his gloved fists. Feels the bruises hot under his hands, hears the crunch of bone. But soon, it’s… It’s not enough. Matt needs more. His nails sharpen into claws, and he rakes them down the man’s chest. Draws blood. It hits his skin with a shock of heat. Soothing. More, Matt needs— he needs more. Digs his claws into the wound, deeper, deeper. Fisting the other hand in the shredded remains of the mobster’s shirt, he lifts him off the ground and—

“Stop!”

Matt freezes. But he doesn’t drop his victim – his prey. The man is limp, unconscious, but there’s not enough blood, there’s not enough. Matt wants to dig his claws in under the man’s ribs until his hands are coated, until he’s covered in burning viscera, until he can sate the tremble in his bones.

“Please,” Claire says, her voice steady and even as her heart shudders in her chest. “You’ve done enough. I’m ok. Please stop.”

He doesn’t have to listen to her. That’s the first thought to cross Matt’s mind, and just thinking it makes him recoil – pulls him back from the slavering, monstrous edge. He’s doing this to protect Claire, to save her and to make her feel safe – if he ignores her pleas and terrifies her, what does that make him? Not a protector, not a savior.

Just another demon.

Matt drops the gangster to the floor, lets the horns and the claws and the fangs bleed away. Then he makes his way over to Claire, and the flames douse as he passes them until the whole garage is still.

“Claire…”

It feels like forgiveness when she takes his outstretched hand, but she’s still cradling one arm to her chest and he can hear the ugly creak of broken bones.

“Just get me the hell out of here,” she says. “Please.”

So he does.

* * *

His shapeshifting doesn’t affect his clothes, normally – because they’re constructs; the City’s or his own, he’s not sure. Well, he’s not sure there’s really a difference either. But after he’s gotten Claire safely home, once she’s stopped shaking and her soul is back to its full glow and her wounds have been tended to as best they can be and she’s made plans to stay somewhere else until Matt can cut the Russians down at their root…

He realizes that his gloves are in tatters, barely recognizable as having once been the gift Claire had bestowed on him. Of course they are – they’re real cloth and he manifested his claws right through them. They also smell strongly of smoke and ash. Matt’s heart aches.

“Claire I’m. I’m sorry,” he says, the shredded gloves clutched in his trembling, human hands.

But Claire just sighs, softly, and closes her fingers over his.

“It’s ok. I’m glad they were able to protect you this long, at least.”

Her heart beats out a rhythm that’s steady and sure and honest. Like always, the brush of her soul is a balm. Matt explains everything to her then, because he owes her after what he and the City have dragged her into. Claire listens quietly, her heart racing, until he’s done.

“You didn’t choose me, did you?” she asks with an admirable amount of calm. “For the City’s deal?”

“No, I. No. I haven’t chosen anyone,” he tells her.

“Good. Because I don’t want it.” Claire takes a deep breath, clasps his shaking hands in hers. “I care about you, Matt. And I’m grateful. And if it makes you feel better to keep our deal open on your end, I’m ok with that. But I don’t want to be payment for the City’s deal. As things stand I don’t want to be tied to you that way, and if you respect me at all you’ll accept that.”

Matt knows he probably doesn’t have the right to feel stung by the rejection – wasn’t he just thinking about how much pain his presence in her life has brought her? – but he can’t help himself. The feeling must show on his face because Claire strokes his cheek with her right hand.

“I won’t choose you,” he tells her fervently. “I. I promise, Claire.”

“Thank you, Matt.”

His name, spoken so kindly, is all the benediction he needs.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt makes a new friend, even if she doesn't want to admit they're friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for the Daredevil Bingo prompt: "Winner's Purse"
> 
> Beta'd by [TheLadyZephyr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLadyZephyr/pseuds/TheLadyZephyr)

Claire’s the one who gives him the idea – practical and ingenious in equal measure, just like her. If he can create armor and weapons, why not other things? Which is how Matt gets a phone. It’s a simple little smartphone, modeled on Claire’s, and it honestly changes his life. The voiceover reads the screen to him, and he can use the internet anywhere with an open WiFi signal – sometimes even a locked one, if the City can communicate the password to him. In true ironic fashion, it cannot actually make phone calls – he doesn’t have a service provider. But thanks to a free texting app and the sometimes-unreliable power of voice to text, Matt does at least have a way of contacting Claire if he really needs to.

She’s been moving around – between friends’ places, her mother’s, and one night a shitty motel that smelled so much like cigarette ash that Matt couldn’t get within half a block without coughing – so the phone is useful for getting updates on where she is if he needs anything stitched up. Or for if the Russians somehow find her again, but Claire hasn’t mentioned that possibility and Matt has decided to follow in her example.

“—you need help tonight, text first and I’ll meet you behind the Thai restaurant on—”

The low, even tones of the voiceover are suddenly blotted out by something else. Matt slips his phone back into his pocket and starts racing towards the noise. There’s no scream, but there is shouting, and a human heartbeat thrumming so loud and fast that Matt’s worried it’s going to give out. There’s someone in trouble, two blocks north. 

“—hustled me!” he catches when he focuses enough to decipher the words being yelled.

The man’s voice is hard, and he speaks with some sort of British accent.

“I won fair and square, jackass,” comes the reply, a woman. “The money’s mine now. Fuck off.”

Finally, Matt’s crouched above them. It’s just the two, the man and the woman. Matt takes a whiff of the air, searching for blood. What he gets is… Something else. The miasma of whiskey around the woman is so strong Matt almost confuses its violent presence with her soul. They’re equally hard-hitting – like walking face-first into a brick wall. The man’s soul and any scent coming off him is totally eclipsed. Unfortunately, it doesn’t block out his voice.

“You think this is over? I could make a lot of trouble for you, Jessica.”

Her heartbeat spikes wildly in terror.

“Call me that again and I’ll punch your fucking lights out,” the woman snarls, but there’s a strain to her voice that Matt feels must be obvious to even someone without enhanced hearing.

She wants to believe it, Matt thinks, wants the man to believe it. But every signal coming off her is projecting fear. The guy takes a threatening step forward, grabs Jessica’s arm… But though her other hand tenses into a fist, she’s trembling and doesn’t use it. Can’t use it.

Matt drops down into the alley.

There’s no cry for help, nothing that could be construed as acceptance of a deal. But the City doesn’t caution Matt, doesn’t stop him from twisting the man’s wrist until he drops Jessica’s arm and slinging him into the alley wall.

“I think she told you to fuck off,” Matt says.

There’s no verbal retort, just a wild punch aimed in the vicinity of Matt’s face. He catches it with his free hand, and then shifts — his usual fangs and claws, the face he knows terrifies the criminals of Hell’s Kitchen. He’s rewarded with a satisfying shriek of fear and the gross but also satisfying odor of urine.

“Run,” Matt orders him, grinning like a jack-o-lantern.

As soon as he’s released, the man runs off.

Matt cocks his head to the side and tracks his fleeing footsteps for a few blocks, just to make sure he’s not going to try and creep back around and get the jump on them. Once he’s satisfied they’re alone, he shifts back to his more human form and turns his attention to the mysterious woman.

**Jessica Jones** , the City tells him, proud and concerned in equal measure, and Matt remembers the flicker-thought it sends him next. Champion. Protector. She’s clearly something powerful, special.

“You ok?” Matt asks, because her heart is still beating wildly.

“I didn’t need your help. I don’t need anyone’s help,” she spits. “And if you come near me again, I’ll obliterate whatever the hell passes for your soul.”

The words don’t necessarily scare Matt, because they’re absolutely nonsensical, but they do stop him short. He’s not sure what’s more ridiculous, the idea that he still has a soul or at least some approximate, or the idea that she, a human with no magic to speak of as far as Matt can sense, thinks she could do anything to harm that nonexistent soul.

“ _ What _ ?” 

“That’s a thing people do, you know,” she says threateningly. “Destroy you, steal your power. Try to fuck with me and I’ll show you firsthand, sulfur-breath.”

Matt tilts his head, listens.

“You won’t,” he replies at last. “But I’m not here to  _ fuck with you _ , Miss Jones.”

“I didn’t tell you my name,” she growls.

“You didn’t,” agrees Matt. “But I hear things.”

“Well hear this. It’s not Miss Jones, and it’s sure as hell not  _ Jessica _ . It’s Jess.”

She’s combative, angry. But she’s one of the City’s protectors, and that means she’s trustworthy. It’s not like Matt doesn’t have his own rough edges. He tries on a smile, gentle as he can make it.

“Jess, then. Like I said, I’m not here to mess with you and I’m sure you can take care of yourself, but it seemed like he wasn’t going to let it go. It’s the sort of instinct you’re probably familiar with, right?”

Jess scoffs, hackles raised and soul even more unwelcoming than before.

“You don’t know anything about me,” she growls. “And if we meet again you’d better not expect anything except a fist to the face.”

Matt, rattled, silently lets Jess go.

Her words about destroying demons unnerve him, but he’s curious nonetheless. The City shows him that night, a little, as best it can. Matt has to choke back bile at the wrongness of it. Demons aren’t good, as a rule, but no one and nothing deserves… Whatever that ritual is.

The City, never mindful of privacy when it sees all its people and their lives as its own, shows him more. Shows him power stolen, the double-pitched, double-wrong voice of a man with a British accent, ordering Jess around. His soul a combination of every bad texture and feeling — itchy and slimy, irritating like smoke in the throat and splinters under the skin simultaneously — shot through with a demonic icy coldness. The sound of strain, as Jess tried to disobey but was compelled to do everything he asked, compelled to smile, to thank him, to enjoy it, to not even be able to say the word ‘no’.

Matt spends the rest of the night on a secluded rooftop with his face pressed to his knees, shivering. He understands the defensive violence coating Jess’s words, and wishes he didn’t.

* * *

The next time they meet, she really does try to punch him in the face. He blocks it, but the force of her swing has him careening into a dumpster with a force that would seriously injure a human. He probably shouldn’t be startled at her enhanced strength, but it catches him off guard nonetheless.

“Would you stop following me already?” Jess snarls, swinging out her fist again and cracking the wall of the building next to them.

“I’m not following you,” insists Matt, stumbling, winded, to his feet. “This is my neighborhood.”

“Your neighborhood, fuck off, how is it your neighborhood?”

He shrugs.

“It just is.”

“That’s a bullshit answer,” she accuses, which is fair enough. “Especially since if you’ve been stalking me as much as you obviously have you know I’ll figure it out soon enough. My PI license isn’t just a prop, you know.”

Matt smiles, shrugs again.

“Maybe I’m just trying to give you a challenge,” he offers.

And if he vaults from a dumpster to the nearest fire escape with a little more flair than usual, he’s gone quickly enough that Jess doesn’t have time to call him on showing off.

* * *

Matt keeps running into Jess, and he’s not sure if she’s stalking him – the risks of intriguing a PI, he supposes – or if her poorly-hidden protective instincts just have her stalking the same dark alleys by coincidence in order to angrily save civilians in trouble. She’s got no tact, but she’s got a soft spot for other women, and vulnerable people gravitate to her blunt strength.

Matt likes her.

That doesn’t, however, mean that Jess likes him back.

But Matt’s determined to win her over if he can. At first it seems like non-confrontational is the right route to go, but that only pisses her off more. So Matt takes a risk and lets a little more of himself show when they interact. Doesn’t hold back the sharp, demonic parts of himself, doesn’t leash his attitude in her presence.

And that… That actually seems to work. She untenses a bit in a way Matt finds hard to quantify, and when a band of Hunters tries to bring an empty building down on his head, she shoves him out of the way of the collapsing ceiling.

“Oh put the horns away already,” she pants afterwards, tossing aside a massive piece of rubble so they can get back onto the street. “You look like a tool.”

“Do not.”

It’s petulant to argue with her, of course, but Matt can’t help himself. It’s… Fun, actually. He enjoys it. Needling Jess and being bugged in return reminds Matt of the way the kids at St. Agnes, the close friends, would tease one another.

“Says the blind demon. Trust me, Lucifer. You absolutely look like a massive tool. Like one of those shitty YA novel demons who makes deals for the protagonist’s virginity.”

There’s a levity to Jess’s tone that wasn’t always there, and Matt thinks, well… Maybe, maybe they’re starting to understand one another.

That, of course, is the moment that her actual words hit him — like a brick wall to the face.

“... Wait,  _ what _ ? There’s. Isn’t that a little. Uh. Mature, for a Young Adult book?”

It’s the first time he hears her laugh.

* * *

The nice thing about how strong and durable Jess is is that she doesn’t ever seem to get hurt. Matt doesn’t have to fight on two fronts with her around — he can rest easy that she’ll be fine, that she can take care of herself. And once she trusts him enough to put her back to him, they make an absolutely spectacular team. The fights that they fight together make Matt’s blood sing, and whenever she texts him that she’s on a case he can hardly keep from bouncing with excitement.

But no one’s invulnerable.

And one night, in the middle of a brawl with half a dozen gangsters, Matt smells blood.  _ Jess’s _ blood. Everything blanks out then. His senses aren’t gone, but they’re distant and muted, like he’s floating a mile above his own body as it tears through the hired guns with ruthless precision. All that breaks through is the occasional splatter of heat, of blood, on his hands, his jaw. Everything else is faded, everything else is—

“Enough!” With a sharp yank, Matt’s feet are off the ground, and there’s a hand fisted in the back of his shirt. “For fuck’s sake, he’s down you psycho.”

The feeling of being dangled in the air saps the dissociative, crackling rage out of him. Matt sags a little in Jess’s grip as he comes back to himself, drops his bloodied hands. The men on the ground are still alive, Matt can hear their hearts, feel the flickering heat of their ugly souls. He can still smell Jess’s blood in the air, faintly, but he can tell now that it’s coming from a light, superficial cut instead of a serious wound.

“You’re… You’re really strong,” he stammers, for lack of anything better to say.

“Don’t make it weird, Zorro,” mutters Jess, and even if he can’t sense it in any meaningful way he can tell by her voice that she’s probably rolling her eyes.

“Of course not.”

Matt keeps his tone very blasé and indignant. It’s not like he didn’t already know that she had superstrength. Still, it takes a little effort to gulp back the heat in his face, the squirmy sensation in his gut. Knowing is different than feeling her lift him up one-handed by his collar like an errant kitten, and it… Maybe kind of… Does things for him.

“I have a boyfriend,” Jess adds, setting Matt back on his feet.

“I know!” he snaps, trying to fight down the mortifying urge to climb into her arms like a damsel in distress. “I wasn’t—”

“He’s got superstrength too.”

“Uh.” Matt’s brain kind of flatlines for a second. “I’m. What does that have to…?”

Jess lets out a loud, ugly snort of laughter, a little muffled – by her fist, Matt thinks. Then she slaps Matt’s shoulder and nearly sends him sprawling.

“Jesus Christ, that really does it for you, huh. Knew you’d be a kinky fucker.” The grin in her voice isn’t flirty or lascivious, but there’s a teasing camaraderie there that Matt thinks has been building for a while. “Come on, Lucifer, I need a drink. You’re paying.”

“I don’t have any money,” Matt points out, falling into step beside her and shifting back to his inconspicuous suit and glasses look.

“You can pull weapons out of thin air, dipshit, just use your magic to make some fucking leprechaun gold.”

“That’s unethical, I can’t do that,” he argues firmly. “It would ruin the local economy.”

“So you can put a guy in a coma without batting an eyelash, but god forbid you shoplift some booze? Seriously?”

They bicker about it halfheartedly all the way to Jess’s chosen bar. Despite her complaints, she ends up paying for him too.

* * *

In the end, Matt tells Jess about himself. About who he is, who he was. About the City’s deal. The way that he’s been searching – the way that he’s still searching for a soul just right for him. She splutters a mouthful of whiskey all over his face, coughs for several minutes, and than calls him ‘a fucking sap’. She’s not wrong.

He and Jess would actually be a pretty decent match, Matt thinks. But after… After what she’s been through, he knows Jess would only see his Mark as a symbol of ownership. If it were her, he knows, she’d either refuse to take a soul as the City’s price or take the soul of the most repugnant person she can think of. In Jess’s mind, a demon’s claim on her soul would be a punishment; she doesn’t understand the connection Matt longs for. So. He can’t do that to her. She deserves so much better than having her boundaries disrespected, especially by someone who claims to care about her. She’s free and she’s relatively happy and she has a boyfriend and she makes her own choices. Her life is a thing she’s fought and scraped to protect, with blood in her teeth, and Matt could never ever take that away from her.

Even if he’s beginning to suspect that the mysterious quality he’s looking for is nonexistent, that he’ll never find a soul that fits his craving exactly, he’ll wait for someone else who’s compatible. Claire has asked him not to choose her, Karen might accept it but she’s not in a good place to consent, he could never choose anyone as vulnerable as a child, and just  _ asking _ Jess would be an act of violence against her no matter how much she might try to tough it out like she doesn’t care.

Matt isn’t a patient person, at heart, but this is worth waiting for. Making the right choice, a good choice, the kind of choice that won’t hurt someone… He’ll wait as long as he has to for that.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt meets Foggy Nelson at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for the Daredevil Bingo prompt: "AU: Careers"
> 
> Beta'd by [TheLadyZephyr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLadyZephyr/pseuds/TheLadyZephyr)

It’s Karen Page who leads Matt at last to what he seeks. He doesn’t check in on her often. The low thrum of their connection is usually enough to convince Matt that Karen is well. But it’s late and she’s walking the streets, and… And she’s not alone. Matt’s curiosity gets the best of him.

He makes his way closer, but stays on the rooftops to keep out of their sight.

Karen’s companion smells heady and sweet, enough that Matt can almost taste it on his tongue. Enough that his fingers twitch with desire when he considers burying his nose in the man’s neck to better inhale his scent. Even more alluringly, the stranger’s soul swirls with magic – Matt is put in mind of photos of the galaxy that he saw as a child. It’s blazingly warm, like sunlight on the skin, and it dances when the man laughs a perfect, glittering laugh. A tremble born of arousal, of hunger, chases its way through Matt’s body at the sound.

“That is  _ not _ how it went,” the man says, amused. “At  _ all _ . If that’s what Brett told you, he’s a filthy liar who lies.”

“Oh really?” teases Karen, and it’s like all her sharp edges have softened a little.

“Yes  _ really _ ! I do not  _ stutter _ on  _ exorcisms _ , Karen! I’m a professional!”

A Hunter, then. And an Exorcist to boot. Matt finds himself intrigued. Those who perform exorcisms are rare. After all, an exorcism requires magic of one’s own. Wielding an iron weapon requires nothing of the sort. Not that this man, all but glowing with magic, would have any issue mustering the power necessary to perform an exorcism.

“A professional, huh?” asks Karen. “Shouldn’t you be making more money, in that case?”

Her companion sputters indignantly.

“I’m a good Samaritan, ok? That’s not unprofessional! I’ll prove it! Ask me anything, any question about Hunting, or demons, or anything,  I bet you I can answer!”

There’s a sudden, bizarre lurch to Karen’s heartbeat, even as she gamely agrees to the challenge. Instead of asking a question right away, she falters. Mulls it over, if Matt’s interpreting her correctly.

“Are, um,” she asks hesitantly. “Are demon Marks always black?”

“What kind of question is that?”

The stranger sounds puzzled, concerned, and the tone of his voice – so full of care, love – sends another shiver of pleasure down Matt’s spine. He wants that tone with a greed that borders on terrifying. Wants it directed at himself.

“Well.” Karen’s voice breaks Matt out of the trance. “Well, say one was… Red. What might that mean?”

The rhythm of the man’s steps stutters, halts.

“Karen, I have literally never heard of a red Mark in my life. Is there… Something you want to tell me? You didn’t, you know, make a deal or something, did you?”

“No!” Karen lies. “No. Just, you know, curious, I suppose.”

“Right.” Her companion doesn’t sound at all convinced. “Well, you know… You know you can tell me anything, right?”

“Yeah, Foggy, of course. Of course I do. Really, it’s nothing.”

_ Foggy _ , Matt mouths to himself, feels the shape of the name on his tongue.  _ Foggy _ . It’s… Silly. Whimsical, and gentle, and sweet. Like the man it belongs to. Perfect.

**Franklin Percy Nelson** , the City purrs proudly – first-middle-last with no hesitation, not even considering the power that name could give Matt over the man strolling, unaware, down the street below him. The power to break free of any spell he casts, to thwart any exorcism he attempts… Even to bewitch or enchant him. It’s an intimate knowledge, but it’s not one Matt wants from the City – it’s not something he wants to use or exploit.

And anyway, he… He likes ‘Foggy’ better than Franklin.

But while Matt might be— enamored, he’s not a fool. Very rarely is anything as it seems at first— Er. Well. Matt isn’t much for glancing. But the point is that people aren’t always what they seem. And as much as he doesn’t want to think that this could be the case with Foggy… Matt’s not used to good things falling into his lap. He wants to be sure, to be absolutely certain, before he makes his choice.

He’s got a little recon to do. The City seems amused with the whole thing, and it doesn’t protest. Actually even seems eager to find out what Matt will do next. He takes this show of interest as the gift it is, and temporarily shifts his focus, from the City’s deal to Foggy.

* * *

Foggy knows a lot of people, Matt finds while trailing him. But he’s only got a few very close friends. One is Karen, of course. The next is Officer Mahoney, which intrigues Matt greatly – it’s not often, from what he recalls as a human, that the police and Hunters get along. They tend to butt heads on questions of precedence and jurisdiction. And it’s not as though Foggy and Mahoney seem particularly buddy-buddy – Foggy seems to get on Mahoney’s nerves with amusing regularity. But… There’s a fondness there, beneath it all. They’ve known one another a long time, Matt concludes. There’s an easiness to their interactions that can only be born of long acquaintance.

Next is Marci Stahl, who makes Matt’s skin prickle a little. It’s not that she’s unlikable – she’s shrewd and confident and her humor matches Matt’s so closely it’s kind of bizarre. It’s only that… She gives off the kind of aura Matt can only compare to an apex predator. Well. He’s also not above admitting that he might be a tiny bit jealous. The scratch of her nails raking through Foggy’s hair – it’s long, to his shoulders – makes Matt grind his teeth every time without fail.

The last is another Hunter, one that the others only call Frank. He’s big and gruff and carries so much iron on him that he makes Matt sneeze even from half a block away. There’s a dangerous precision to his steps, something even Officer Mahoney doesn’t have, and it screams ‘soldier’. Frank’s soul is banked low, like he’s dying, even though every other sense Matt has says that he’s healthy and strong. No smell of sickness, no hitched breathing or broken bones – although the sound of his movements suggest he’s had more than his fair share of them over his lifetime. No scent of blood, no heat of bruises or fever. It doesn’t make any sense. For days, it leaves Matt puzzled.

Except then, after a night out for drinks at a cheap bar that buzzes with neon, Foggy jostles Frank a little and his soul blazes bright – a simple touch like kindling, Foggy sharing his light and making them both grow alluring with renewed heat. The embers of Frank’s soul ignite further when Karen pulls him into a loose hug, her elegant hands sliding gently across the fabric of his coat. Dazzled, Matt trails the three of them back to a broken-down apartment complex that smells like wet brick and old wood. He’s only a flickering shadow in the glow of their souls’ combined brilliance, but he doesn’t care. He wants— needs, to be close.

Behind one door on the third floor of the building, a dog’s tail begins to wag so madly that its hind legs skitter across the floor. That door is the one Karen unlocks with a key and flings wide to allow their tipsy six-legged-race procession tumble through. Frank nudges the others further in, then goes back to bolt the door as they stumble towards – a bed? A couch? Something soft and padded that gives a little under their weight. Frank’s soul doesn’t flicker completely out now that he’s lost physical contact with the other two, but it does start to lose its glow. Embers, instead of crackling fire.

The dog barks brightly.

“Hey, Max,” Frank rumbles, crouches down with a slight creak of joints to pet it.

Again, his soul bursts into brilliant, blazing heat.

Matt had lost his sight by that time, but he remembers a science class where the teacher added different compounds to flames, how the other students oohed and ahhed as they changed color. Frank’s soul is that way, Matt thinks. Altered and colored by the people around him, by whatever blood in his past haunts him and douses the flames of his life’s energy. There’s so little left of Frank himself, of what might be called the pure essence of him, that on his own he might almost be mistaken for a demon. It’s likely that only helps him in hunting them down, hides his presence, keeps him off their radar a little.

But the moment Frank reaches out a hand, the moment Foggy or Karen – or, hell, even his dog apparently – reaches back… It’s abundantly clear just how very human he is.

Which is… That’s good, Matt thinks. Good that Foggy’s friend isn’t as cold or deadened to the world as he might have initially seemed.

“What’s the plan for next week, boys?” Karen asks lazily, and there’s a few light creaks and pops as she stretches.

“Still gotta track a couple cases,” grunts Frank, and in two long strides he’s flopping down on the – couch, it must be a couch – next to Foggy and Karen. “And scout whatever’s leaving that new Mark all over town. That’s a shitshow waiting to happen.”

Foggy gives an amused little snort.

“That, Karen, is what we call  _ hypervigilance _ ,” he says. “Come on, Frank, nobody’s hired us. No use pissing off a demon we don’t have to. They’re bound by their deals, and so is their power. You don’t always have to go in guns blazing.”

“Magic is a hell of a lot more about intent than it is about any bullshit contractual minutiae,” Frank points out sourly. “You can’t reason with these demon shitbags.”

“I mean— yeah, I guess,” agrees Foggy. “But look, Frank, even you have to know it is literally impossible to blast every demon in New York to smithereens. And even if you did, they’d probably get summoned again eventually. If we can form some sort of long-term symbiosis, at least until I can sort out my True Exorcism spell…”

“You keep talking about that True Exorcism shit, the Council’s gonna send somebody to put a bullet in your brain,” Frank says roughly, and his heart shudders in his chest as he does.

“Like you’d let them,” comes the amused reply.

There’s so much… Trust in it. Foggy trusts Frank to keep him safe – even more, it seems, than Frank trusts himself. The thought of being on the receiving end of that unshakable faith is enough to bring a ghost of heat to Matt’s fingertips.

It lasts all through the night listening to them talk, and well into the morning as Matt makes his meandering way down the sidewalks of Manhattan. He’s discovered a lot, started making headway in understanding Foggy Nelson, but he’s not quite satisfied.

And there’s not much more he can learn without taking another step closer.

* * *

Karen’s been asking around about him. Not anyone dangerous, thankfully, but she seems to have a contact at the local paper. A mentor, maybe. Matt isn’t all they talk about when they meet, but he is a recurring topic of conversation, and they meet often. Normally, Karen is the first to go, hurrying away to Foggy and Frank. This time, the man gets a call on his phone, and his pulse begins to race as he pulls it from his pocket with a rustle of fabric. He stammers out something about his wife and takes off. This time, it’s Karen left alone.

Just the opportunity Matt’s been waiting for. He drops down into the alley.

“Speak of the Devil,” Matt teases, “and he shall appear.”

Karen takes a stumbling step backwards, almost trips over her heeled shoes. Her heart is thundering in her chest like a train over tracks.

“Stay back,” she orders.

“I’m here to collect on our deal,” Matt explains very calmly, holding up his hands with the palms out. “And I’d like it if you would cooperate.”

She laughs, a noise as sharp as the brittle points of her soul.

“And if I don’t?”

“I’d prefer if you did,” repeats Matt; because he doesn’t want to make threats, because he knows he won’t follow through with them, because Karen Page has already been through enough. “But I’m not inclined to leave until I get what I came here for.”

“I could hire a Hunter,” Karen threatens.

Matt shakes his masked head.

“If you did that you’d die, Karen. If I get sent back under with your side of our deal unfulfilled, my end of the bargain is nullified.” He paces a step closer. “You could bank on the very slim chance of yourself having been able to defeat that hitman alone, but it seems like an unnecessary risk. Neither of us wants you dead.”

“And what do you want?”

“I want,” Matt says, “to know about Foggy Nelson.”

“No.”

Her tone is flat, brooking no argument. The Mark on Karen’s arm glows warm. A warning. It doesn’t burn because Matt— he likes Karen. He does. She’s one of his people and he wants to protect her. However…

“We made a deal, Karen Page,” he tells her, low and dangerous. “And this is my price. What I’m owed. I told you already, I’m collecting on it now, so tell me everything you know about Foggy Nelson.”

“If you hurt him—”

“I would never hurt him,” Matt interrupts, much more breathless than he’d like.

That seems to startle the anger out of her, but it does little for the reluctance. There’s some grinding as she grits her teeth, clenches her hands into fists. But after a few seconds, her posture falls suddenly loose. He’s underestimated Karen, maybe, Matt thinks absently, listening to her take two, three, calming breaths.

“Foggy Nelson is a certified autonomous demon hunter and a fifth-tier exorcist,” explains Karen, almost robotically. “He’s a Hell’s Kitchen native. His birthday is July 10 th . He—”

But that’s wrong. That’s not what he meant.

“I could find all of that from an internet search,” Matt says sharply. “I don’t want a stat sheet. I want to know about  _ him _ . What he’s like as a person. What you think of him.”

“ _ Why _ ?” demands Karen, her anger surging again, and it’s like he can feel her soul prickling against his skin, sharp points that never quite press hard enough to draw blood.

“Not that it’s any of your place to know,” Matt spits back at her, baring an unfriendly smile. “But we’ll call it… Curiosity. Now… Tell me about him.”

Karen holds strong for another few seconds in stony silence, but eventually she speaks.

“He’s…” she begins, rubbing her arms, and her voice goes quieter as she faces deliberately to the side. “He was the first person to befriend me when I moved to New York.”

And she tells him, haltingly, unwillingly, about that time. How he and Frank saved her, got her out of a false murder charge by proving it had been committed by a demon and that she wasn’t in a contract. About how she hadn’t really trusted him, but he’d let her stay in his own apartment the very first night they’d met, even against Frank’s advice. Matt feels warmth tingling in his fingertips just at the thought of that level of kindness.

“More,” he orders when Karen falls silent. “Tell me more. Anything.”

“I don’t, I won’t—”

“Karen.”

Her hair swishes as she shakes her head, but she starts speaking again.

“He loves people,” she tells Matt, almost accusingly, “cares about them. He’d do anything he could to help someone else unless it put his family and friends in danger. Even a demon.”

He nods, finds himself smiling slightly. For anyone else, that might be an exaggeration, but for Foggy… Matt would believe it. Everything about him radiates goodness, compassion.

“More,” he urges her.

“He…” Karen falters. “I don’t… He likes musical theatre, and the Star Wars movies, and Jolene Burnett’s poetry. He’s got a sense of humor that’s simultaneously great and terrible, and refuses to stop using puns.” Her heart thunders loudly, and Matt can hear her grit her teeth as her anger overtakes her fear again. “His mom wanted him to be a butcher, and he puts way too much horseradish on his hotdogs!” she seethes. “ _ There _ ! Is that enough?”

Matt wants to say no, wants to force her to tell him more. Tell him everything, every detail she knows. Everything there is to know about Foggy. But it’s… It’s enough. He doesn’t want to push her further, cause her more distress. He knows she’s telling him even this much only under duress.

“Yes, that. That’s enough. Thank you. Your obligation to me is fulfilled.”

“Then get the hell away from me before I decide to find out if pepper spray works on demons,” she says darkly.

Matt puts his hands up in a defensive position, backs away slowly.

“I’d be grateful if you didn’t,” he offers, before leaping onto the nearest fire escape and vaulting onto the rooftops.

* * *

Karen turns and runs almost as soon as Matt’s out of her line of sight. She gets in a cab, winds through the city so much that he nearly loses her several times. Finally, she pulls up in front of a building that has Foggy Nelson inside. His real apartment, if Matt had to guess, rather than the safehouse-like one he shares with Frank. Foggy buzzes Karen in, and practically bursts down the door of his apartment. Matt listens from the roof to the way Foggy’s heart stutters with panic, feels the warmth of his soul curl around Karen’s sharp edges.

“Karen? What…?”

“I’m sorry,” she says past huffing little sobs – and still, not a single tear; there’s no salt in the air, no near-silent roll of liquid on skin. “Foggy, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s ok.” When Karen protests with a shake of her head that has her hair giving a silken swish, Foggy folds her into his arms. “Karen. Whatever it is, it’s ok, just… Calm down. We’ll fix it.”

“I told him about you,” she confesses, muffled – face buried in Foggy’s shoulder, guesses Matt.

There’s a frightened stutter in Foggy’s heart, but he doesn’t push Karen away, doesn’t let his voice waver from its calm surety.

“Who? Karen, told who about me?” he asks. “Someone on the Council?”

“No, I.”

Karen pulls away, stumbles back, and her heels click on the floor. There’s a slight rustle of fabric. Pulling up her sleeve, thinks Matt. Showing Foggy the Mark that Matt gave her – it’s still fading, Matt knows, slower than usual because he’s been using the last dregs of their connection to track her here. Foggy swears indelicately, and Matt shudders.

“A  _ demon deal _ ? Really?” There’s a slide of skin as Foggy grabs Karen’s wrist. “You could have told me, Karen, you could have—”

“What would be the point, Foggy?” she asks. “I didn’t have a choice. It. That night I was attacked, it wasn’t me that knocked out the assassin. It was a demon. The Devil everyone’s been talking about.”

“Jesus Christ,” hisses Foggy.

“But my deal is done now,” Karen insists. “See? The Mark is gone. We can get Frank’s help and—”

Foggy’s magic flickers – not enough that he’s actively using it, but enough that it matches the agitated beat of his heart.

“We’re not telling Frank about this.”

With a flash of heat, Karen’s sharp-hot soul flares and she stomps her foot.

“A demon is stalking you and you don’t want to tell Frank?  _ Foggy _ !”

“Don’t  _ Foggy _ me, Karen,” Foggy sighs. “He has enough on his plate already. And frankly he’s not great at conflict resolution. Sue me if I want to know what’s going on with this Devil before I go in guns blazing. No matter how much of a creep he is, he saved your life. He must have at least a little uncorrupted good left in him.”

The words make Matt laugh softly to himself. He doesn’t know about uncorrupted good, though the City offers warm reassurances, a soothing breeze against the back of his neck. But it’s like before, Foggy’s trust in Frank – this time, even a little of that faith is fixated on Matt. And it’s  _ perfect _ .

* * *

The first time they meet, actually meet, isn’t nearly as auspicious as Matt would have hoped. He’s got a mid-level drug dealer slammed up against an alley wall and his form has gone monstrous. Claws, fangs, horns, anything Matt can conjure himself into to steep his target in fear. Just a last little push over the edge, since broken bones hadn’t seemed to be enough to do the trick. He’s so ruled by the chill in his bones, by the heat singing in the veins of his prey, that he doesn’t even hear the gasp behind him.

But Foggy wears a ring made of iron on the middle finger of each hand, and the scent of them itches in Matt’s nose, an irritant. It pulls him from the bloodlust even before the defensive marshalling of Foggy’s magic, before the horrified,

“Stop!”

This isn’t how he wants to be seen, it isn’t how he wants  _ Foggy _ to see him. Matt slings his prey aside and immediately he’s back in the business suit, back to something pretty and human and – he hopes – appealing. The hitch in Foggy’s breath is a little promising, but it could be from shock alone.

“I already know you’re a demon,” Foggy says calmly, hands held up, palm out, between them. “There’s no need for a glamour.”

It’s not a glamour. Matt’s shape is literally changing. But he knows admitting that would reveal how much magic he truly has access to, so he obliges in silence, shifts to the masked, horned form. Still, the idea of Foggy seeing him at his most monstrous is appalling, so he keeps his teeth and claws in check.

“Is this a vanity thing?” Foggy asks, sounding a little amused.

Like an idiot, Matt can’t seem to find his voice. He’s spent all this time waiting and planning and— god forbid, fantasizing about meeting Foggy face to face, but now all the charming, alluring things he’d been planning to say have completely vanished. He shrugs, chagrined.

“Honestly, I can’t blame you, buddy. It’s a very nice face,” adds Foggy when it becomes clear that Matt’s not about to speak. “Handsome. I wouldn’t wanna part with it either.”

“You think I’m handsome?” Matt asks when he can finally spit out a coherent thought, and it thankfully comes out in a suave little purr instead of breathy and desperate.

“I mean. Yeah? I kinda figured that’s why you chose this glamour. Have you  _ seen _ yourself?”

With a shrug, Matt flicks a hand in front of his masked eyes.

“I haven’t seen much of anything in a long time.”

“You’re  _ blind _ ?” Foggy demands, startled, then flushes adorably warm when Matt shrugs. “Shit. Sorry, that’s. I mean, I just. Wasn’t expecting that. Ugh. I swear I don’t usually stick my foot in my mouth like this.”

“It’s ok,” Matt reassures him with a smirk. “I like the sound of your voice.”

Foggy swallows. His breathing stutters and changes several times, like he’s working up the nerve to say something, or figuring out what could possibly suit the situation.

“Who  _ are _ you?” he manages to ask Matt at last.

“Karen mentioned me, I believe.”

There’s a spike in Foggy’s heartbeat, but that’s the only sign of surprise he gives off.

“So. You’re him,” Foggy says, taking slow, cautious steps to the side. “The Devil.”

Matt follows Foggy’s process but doesn’t bother to turn his head as if he’d need his eyes to do it.

“Yes.”

“And you’ve been asking around about me.”

“I have,” replies Matt, unashamed.

He waits until Foggy’s directly behind him and then whirls to pin him — gently, so gently — to the wall; one of Matt’s hands is on Foggy’s shoulder, and the other is pressing Foggy’s wrist up next to his head. His skin is soft under Matt’s fingertips, even softer than Matt had imagined. The surge of desire through him is so strong it nearly buckles his knees and sends him to the ground. Matt’s never wanted anything or anyone as much as he now wants to bind himself close to Foggy Nelson.

“What,” stammers Foggy, pulse pounding against Matt’s fingers. “What is it you really want, anyway?”

Matt inhales as he considers his response. And that? Oh, that’s unmistakably the smell of attraction. Arousal. A wolf’s grin steals across Matt’s face, and he buries it in Foggy’s throat. Takes a deep, hungry breath.

“Isn’t it obvious,” he asks, still skimming his thumb over the soft underside of Foggy’s wrist, “what I want from you?”

It’s agony to pull away, but Matt manages it. Flashes one last smirk before he’s vaulting back up the side of the building and onto the rooftops.

“Hey!” Foggy shouts after him, beautifully indignant. “That’s not an answer!”

Matt smiles to himself. Why bother answering, when leaving Foggy hanging will ensure that he’s thinking about Matt every day until they meet again? Matt will wait and listen and let Foggy’s brilliant mind spin in circles with him at the center. Matt might not be an expert at relationships, but he knows how to keep someone interested.

And he’s going to keep Foggy very, very interested.

* * *

They don’t speak again for another three weeks, although Matt still keeps tabs on Foggy as much as he can. He also spends his time looking into the things Karen had mentioned Foggy liking. His taste, Matt decides, is a little flamboyant, but also emotional and enjoyable.

In the end, Foggy’s cornered in an alley by two humans and a demon – all of whom work for the City’s enemy, if its unease is any indication. Matt makes quick work of them, careful to keep the men alive but contained in constructed chains at the opening of the alley. Foggy exorcises the other demon with a wash of ice-cold power that leaves goosebumps racing across Matt’s skin. There’s sirens not long after that, and they both seem to have the same thought because Matt can hear Foggy twisting through side streets along with him, eager to keep from losing his night to police questioning.

And then? Then it’s just the two of them.

“Devil,” Foggy says, clearly trying to sound gruff and irritated but failing miserably.

Matt’s line is ‘we meet again’ or maybe even ‘you should really be more careful, Mr. Nelson’ but that isn’t what comes out of his mouth. No, what passes Mat’s lips instead is:

“You smell like lavender.”

“I had a stressful week,” Foggy replies with a faux-irritation that’s laughably easy to distinguish from the measured, controlled way he talks when he’s really annoyed; the voice he uses to talk to clients he hates. “I used a bath bomb, so sue me.”

The turn of phrase is, well, a bit concerning, until the City sends Matt a wave of sensation — warm water, nice scents, a fizzing feeling on his fingertips.

“Ah,” he says, unable to think of a good response when his imagination has taken over imagining Foggy, warm and wet and soft, in a bath.

“Yeah. So are you still here for a legitimate reason, or are you just here to wax poetic?”

And that’s an invitation if Matt’s ever heard one.

“The words fall from his lips like droplets of silver,” he quotes, grinning. “Shining and bright and pure. Cold on your fingers and cold in your heart except where they ignite and light your veins aflame.”

“How—” Foggy’s heart stumbles in surprise. “Where did you hear that?”

“Karen told me you were a fan of Jolene Burnett poetry. And I’m an avid reader.”

“Not too busy terrorizing Hell’s Kitchen?” Foggy asks.

Matt presses a hand to his chest in mock offense.

“Terrorizing? You wound me.”

“Oh?” He can practically hear the raised eyebrow. “And what would you call it?”

“Protecting,” he replies simply.

It’s the truest way he can think to put it. He’s here to protect the City, and he  _ wants _ to protect all the innocent people in it, the ones being hurt, the ones who can’t protect themselves. It’s an endless calling, although he at least hopes that the war for the City’s existence will be one he can finish decisively.

Foggy could call him on how self-righteous it sounds. Maybe he even considers doing it. But instead, he opens his mouth and asks,

“Protecting it from what? Why are you really here?”

Matt contemplates the question, fidgeting with his sleeve. He needs to get this part right. This is his proposal, his final appeal to Foggy. And it shouldn’t be… It’s not that it’s hard, that Foggy’s unreasonable or prejudiced. His outlook on demons is surprisingly neutral. Matt doesn’t need to spin a complicated logical web. But because it’s Foggy, he needs to get this right.

“I’m here because there’s something wrong walking these streets. Something evil, spreading fast. And I want to stop it,” explains Matt. “I… I’d like it, if we could work together. But I know you hunt demons; it’s pretty doubtful you’re looking to work with one. So I suppose my question is, how far would you go? To save this City, and the people in it?”

“It’s my home,” Foggy says, shrugging his shoulders with a rustle of fabric. “I’d do pretty much anything to protect it. To keep my family and friends safe.”

It’s how Matt feels. He doesn’t have a family or friends anymore, but there are people that he loves, that he wants to keep safe. Not to mention the City itself. The sure, steady truth of Foggy’s words plays in his heartbeat, sweet and clear and undeniable. And Matt knows, then, really knows that Foggy is perfect for him.

“You’re a good man,” Matt says, a little more choked up than the conversation calls for.

What he wants to say is  _ you’re mine _ , but he doubts that would go over well.

“I mean…” Foggy sounds flattered, flustered. “I try to be.”

“I think you’re succeeding,” offers Matt, doing his best to put on a charming smile again.

Foggy’s heartbeat stutters, and his soul flares beautifully.

“Uh. Thanks, I guess. That’s… Yeah, thanks.” He’s about to say something more when there’s a tinny beep from his pocket. “Oh. Oh, shit, I was supposed to be— Ah, man, Frank’s gonna kill me. Fuck, I have to—” He gestures vaguely. “I’m waving my arm stupidly. Look, I think… I think we should talk more about whatever it is you think is threatening the city, but for now I have to go. I’ll see you around, I guess?”

Matt nods.

“Just call for me. I’ll be close.”

“That’s not freaky at all,” Foggy mutters under his breath, but he doesn’t actually sound too off-put. “Ok, well. Uh. Bye, I guess.”

He hurries off, taking the feeling of warm-safe-home he exudes with him.

“Bye, Foggy,” Matt murmurs.

Since the night is quiet, he doesn’t have a destination in mind. But the moment his senses aren’t locked onto Foggy anymore he picks up on Jess’s whiskey-breath, tracks her to a fire escape five floors above his head. He laughs softly, shakes his head, and swings his way up to her.

“Jess.”

“Lucifer. Interesting little tryst you just had. Considering Nelson as your price?”

“Seems like you’re the one following me now,” Matt jokes, stretching and then sitting cross-legged beside her.

“I’m a PI, it’s what I do,” says Jess. “You’re avoiding the question.”

There’s a slight clatter as her legs knock against the fire escape. Matt sighs.

“Yes, then. I was scoping him out to be my. My price. I like him.”

“ _ Like _ him,” Jess snorts. “You’re practically trailing cartoon hearts, Murdock, I think it’s a little further along than ‘like’. But that guy? Really? I knew you were dumb, but not ‘demon who falls in love with an exorcist’ dumb.”

“I prefer to think of myself as unorthodox,” Matt says serenely.

Jess punches his arm – lightly for her but with enough force it would probably dislocate the average human’s shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it, dickhead. Just.” She clears her throat. “Just be careful. Nelson’s not a bad guy but he’s not a fucking cream puff like he looks, either.”

“I don’t have any idea how he looks,” Matt points out.

“For fuck’s sake, Murdock—”

* * *

It’s late, and Foggy’s walking home alone.

Well. Not necessarily alone, Matt’s been following him for three blocks. Protecting him, watching over him. Keeping him safe. And Foggy needs to be safe, because Matt’s finally come to a decision. Finally made his choice.

_ That one _ , he thinks, breathless with his own certainty, all his senses focused on Foggy.  _ I want that one _ .

And the City obliges him instantly. Matt can feel the warmth of Foggy Nelson’s soul glowing through every fiber of him, banishing the cold like a memory, like a parent banishes a nightmare. And then, white-hot, there’s a burning at his pulse point. He traces it with a finger, and the City flashes an image across his mind – the Scales of Justice, glowing white. Matt smiles. He brushes his fingers over the Mark at his throat again and again, marveling at the impossibility of it, at the heat it pulses through him to the beat of Foggy’s heart. Warmth and pleasure and awe zip across his nerve endings in equal measure. The gift the City has given him is beyond compare – a Mark, from a human, it’s… Unheard of. Miraculous.

For a long, joyous minute, Matt listens to the echo, the call and response between Foggy’s heart on the street below and the Mark on Matt’s skin. And then, grinning like a devil, he flings himself off the rooftops and into the night to make good on his own end of the City’s deal.


	13. Chapter 13




End file.
